The Chosen (10 page)

Keith was sitting up drinking coffee and waiting for her.  “I really want to call this guy,” she said of Cicchetti.  “Part of me wanted to call the number as soon as I got the text. But another part of me is scared to do it. What if this is a set up? What if he works for Homeland Security, and he’s just waiting for phone calls from people like me? I honestly don’t know what to do,” she ran her hands through her hair as she often did when stressed and frustrated.

“Nobody’s going to do anything until we find out exactly who this guy is, who he works for, and what he does.”

“How can we possibly find out all of that? Even if we do a search on the internet, that doesn’t mean that any of the
information we find out about him will be the truth.  He could be anybody.”

“If
we
do a search, we don’t have any guarantees; that’s why we are not going to do the checking. This is a job for somebody who can check through all the back channels and find out who he really is.  This is a job for Jessie and Kyle.”

The next morning Keith disappeared early and stayed gone
all
day.
Kris was accustomed to his long absences, but now with everyone else gone she felt them keenly.  She was alone with nothing to do but wonder and pray.

“Lord, I don’t know what to do. Please show us whether Julian Cicchetti is another set up or somebody who can actually help us. If he is a just another government plant looking for information, help us to find that out right away.  And if he can help us, please show us what we need to do.”

All day long she prayed the same prayer over and over as she tidied up the trailer and waited.  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she heard Keith’s motorcycle outside.  His hair was dusty, and she could see little particles of dust float off his clothing as he entered the trailer.

“What did you find out?” Kris demanded. She knew
that
he was tired
,
and she could have waited a little more patiently and asked him about his day, but she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. 

“Well, Cicchetti is the real deal—for whatever that’s worth.  The guy is a constitutional attorney with over 30 years of experience. He clerked for
Rehnquist
while he was in law school. Went on to become an attorney and started the Freedom League.  He’s smart—Jessie was able to get into his law school transcripts—top of his class at Columbia
Law School. He’s argued over twenty
cases before the U.S.
Supreme Court and
lost only three
of them.
He believes in liberty and freedom and family and apple pie….He’s great
,
except that he’s totally useless.”

“Useless? How is that useless?” Kris’ heart was pounding
,
and she was speaking much faster than
she realized. “I asked Lena to help me get Mi
chael
and Jeff released.  She gave me this number and said that he could help—that he might help. She must have thought that he
would
take their case
and
that he could get them released.”

“What case?  Mike and Jeff haven’t been charged with a crime
.
They’re not entitled to a trial; they’ve just been hauled away into the darkness—just like O’Brien, just like everybody.  I’m surprised this
Cicchetti guy’s
not sharing a cell with them already—if he gets involved in this he will be. But let’s say that for some reason he’s suicida
l,
and he decides to commit suicide by acting as an attorney for two guys who’ve been arrested for domestic terrorism. Who would he go to? Without the right to a trial, they don’t need a lawyer.”

“No, this is it, Keith. I just know it. You said that Cicchetti has argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and won. Maybe he would take Michael and Jeff’s case to the Supreme Court. Maybe he would argue that indefinite detention is unconstitutional—if he did that and he won, then they could be releas
ed.
And not just them—
everybody could be released.
The note that Michael sent me said, ‘Fight for the laws of our country.’ This is what he meant.”

“Fight how?
Cicchetti argues cases about constitutional law, except that the Constitution apparently doesn’t exist anymore and
,
in case you’ve forgotten, neither does the Supreme Court.”

“The Supreme Court exists. They just haven’t heard any cases while they’re waiting for their building to be cleaned up since that thing happened with the
bomb threat
.”

“Oh, come on, Kris.  Do you really think that after three years the U.S. government still hasn’t cleaned up one building
in Washington D.C. so that the C
ourt can meet, while,
inexplicably
, all of the other buildings around it remain perfectly safe
?
That ‘terrorist attack’ was such a stupid, transparent frame-up from the start. There was never any danger from
explosives
. It was just an excuse to lock up the building and disband the
C
ourt. This country is full of buildings—the justices could have found one to meet in while theirs was being cleaned if they hadn’t already known what was up. Those gutless wonders in Congress and SCOTUS just stood around looking scared while the President locked up the Supreme Court
B
uilding and took away all of their authority. I can tell you this—they’ll never meet again. That build
ing will sit there
closed
until
it falls down from neglect before another case is heard there.

“So here’s what we’ve really got—a guy who used to argue a dead set of laws nobody respects anymore in front of a group of old has-been judges nobody respects anymore. If you ask me, Cicchetti is about as worthless as the world’s greatest
buggy whip
maker at the New York International Auto Show.”

Kris walked outside.  Everything Keith had said was true. There was no reason to believe that Cicchetti would meet with her. There was no reason to believe that if he did meet with her he would take her case. The U.S. Supreme Court had not met for three years, and the Constitution was no longer governing the country. This was a dead end.

She looked out over the horizon. St.
George was such a bleak place.
The desert appeared to stretch on forever, and at the far end of it the sun
had sunk below the horizon
, leaving just a slight rosy tint in the sky. Where was Michael tonight? Was he in a
dark windowless
cell?  Was he outdoors in a labor
camp finishing a day of grueling work? Could he see this same sunset? Was he even still alive?

As she watched the rose-
colored hues fade to dark purple and then to black, she heard one voice in her head which became one thought in her heart, “Trust Me.”  The empty coldness in her heart gave way to hope, “Trust Me.”  The Lord had not given her this lead for no reason. She had to follow it; she had to try.  Until she knew for certain that they were dead, or until she herself could not go
on
any longer, she was going to go on believing that Michael and Jeff were alive, and she was going to go on praying and working to get them released
.
There was no turning around—no going back.

Keith had dozed off from the exhaustion of riding his bike hundreds of miles and then being with Jessie for hours researching Cicchetti.  Tomorrow she was going to find out where Cicchetti’s office was
,
and she was going to go see him.  If he refused to see her, she would keep trying until
he agreed
.  And if he did not or could not help her, she would trust that her journey to see him had brought her clos
er to finding someone else who w
ould help her. 
In the morning s
he would say goodbye to Keith
and take his J
eep to wherever she had to go. She lay down on the lumpy couch
,
and for the first time in weeks she f
e
ll
into a deep
sleep.

Chapter 16

E
arly the next morning as the first rays of light began to
shine
through the window,
Kris
was up.  Keith heard her and got up too.  She told him that she was leaving and realized that he did not seem
surprised.  “Yeah, I figured you would.” He rinsed the dust out of his hair and ran a comb through it—sort of.  The combination of dust and water had made his curls tangle
,
and he did not take the time to comb
them
out. 

Going outside, he got his bike and carried it into the trailer, as he always did when he was locking the place up for an extended period of time.

“Well, there’s nothing to eat here, so I guess we can
get
some
thing
on the road,” he mumbled as he got his jacket.

“Keith,” she stopped him. “I don’t want you to go with me.  I know you think this is a fool’s errand, and you
’
re probably right. This is very dangerous, and you won’t have any way to get in touch with Jessie and Kyle. 
I’ll
go by myself and let you know what happens.”

“There’s no way I’m letting you take Rubi all the way to D
.
C
.
by yourself,” he
used
his pet name for his Jeep Rubicon. “Anyway, I don’t need to be here to get a
hold of Jessie and Kyle. I’ve got my own ways of tracking down those two. Now get in
to
the Jeep so
that
we can get going.”

Keith was remarkably calm
,
but
Kris
could see that he had made up his mind
,
and there was no changing it.  Anyway, he had the keys and she had little choice but to cooperate.
Climb
ing into the Jeep, she prayed silently for a safe trip. She hated to see Keith put himself in any more danger; he was the only person she had left
,
and if she lost him too she did not know how she could
bear
it, so part of her wished desperately that he had stayed in St. George, but another part of her was relieved that he was going with her.

The trip to D.C. from St. George was almost 2000 miles. It took
the better part of
three days for the pair to reach their destination as they took turns driving first through the baking desert and then through the increasingly greener countryside. Finally, just outside Charlottesville, West Virginia, Keith pulled up
to
a rundown motel. “We’re about 100 miles out now. We’ve got to get some rest before we go see this guy. If we
’
re going to ask him to stick his neck out
for us, we probably want to
at least
be able to
talk to him intelligently. And we might want to take a shower so that we don’t look like we live in
a
cave.”

As tired and sore as Kris was, she had to laugh
; t
ogether they made quite a
rumpled,
sunburned pair
. Af
ter three days in Rubi
, t
he thirteen-year-old
J
eep looked only a little worse than they did.  Julian Cicchetti would either be
really
horrified or really impressed by their determination.

After three days of driving and sleeping in
the
moving vehicle, even the nervous anticipation of meeting with Julian Cicchetti could not keep Kris awake. When she awoke the next
morning, for a few seconds after opening her eyes she could not remember where she was or how she had gotten there.
A
s
her head
cleared
, however,
she recalled that she had just made a 2000 mile road trip to see a man she
had never met
.

An hour later she and Keith were back on the road.  Keith had Julian’s office address in Washington D.C. printed on a slip of paper so that they could go straight there when they got into the city.  They had not made an appointment ahead of time because Kris was afraid that if she called
first
he might refuse to see her.  She would rather take her chances by just showing up at his office and hope that he would agree to give her a few minutes of his time than to call and be told that he would not see her.

“Julian’s office is on Constitution Avenue,” Kris told her brother as he entered the D.C. city limits. 

“Of course, where else would it be?” Keith smirked as
he
headed in that direction.

During his years as a cable network news photographer,
Keith had driven in Washington D.C. many times; as a result
,
he knew the city well and found
the address without difficulty.
Cicchetti’s building had a cream-colored brick exterior with white columns in front.  The architecture was reminiscent of the historic buildings on the street leading up to it, but the pale
color of the brick gave it an ’
80’s vibe. Keith found a long term parking lot several blocks away and paid the attendant $100.00 for one day’s parking. The pair then walked down Constitution Avenue past memorials and federal offices to Cicchetti’s building.  The morning was warm and muggy, and the sun seemed to be playing hide-and-seek with the clouds.

Kris had mentally rehearsed what she planned to say when she met Julian—just as she had always rehearsed all important interviews ahead of time. She had been so
certain
that he would help her, but now, as she walked to his office she was no longer sure. What if he flatly refused to see her? What if he were not even in town?

They were now in front of his building. Keith went up the steps first
and
pulled the door open for her. Like Cicchetti’s law practice, th
e reception area appeared
to be straight out of another era. The walls had a wainscoting in a warm cherry wood
, and
the floor was covered in the same polished wood with its comforting cherry tones. The cherry was accentuated by a bea
utiful moss green color on the
walls
above it. T
o the left of the room was a seating arrangement of a sofa and chairs upholstered in a fabric with deep burgundy and moss green stripes. 
At
the end of the room was a huge fireplace that almost covered that wall—Kris could imagine that a fire crackling in the fireplace would be amazingly comforting during the bitter cold Washington winters.  Directly in front of them was a round table
holding
an artificial arrangement of the same burgundy and green tones, and behind the table was a desk where a thin woman in her fifties sat facing them.  She was working
at
her computer when they opened the door, and when they entered the room
,
she rose to greet them.

“Good morning. May I help you?” Anne Davison inquired with a polite but businesslike smile.

Kris walked toward the des
k.  “I’m Kris Mitchell—Linton
,” she had not called herself by her
maiden
name for several years; the fact that she had done so now was proof of just how nervous she was. “This is my brother Keith—Keith Mitchell. We don’t have an appointment, but we were hoping
to be able to speak with Julian Cicchetti.  We drove all the way from Utah to talk to him; we won’t take up much of his time…”

“Mr.
Cicchetti had a lunch meeting, and he has already left the building.  Normally
,
he receives visitors by appointment only. May I ask why you want to see him?”

“Of course. My husband, Michael Linton, and my brother-in-law Jeff
Conners
were arrested by the federal government and are being detained. No charges have been brought against them,
and they are not going to trial, but they have been accused of domestic terrorism by the government. It’s not true—neither my husband nor my brother-in-law has ever been involved in any acts of terrorism. But they did operate a website called
The Wall
which posted the names of Americans who had been detained under the indefinite detention provisions of the NDAA—the information they posted should be protected under First Amendment free speech.  I was hoping to talk to Mr. Cicchetti.  A friend of mine gave me his name, and she said that he could—might—help us.  I was hoping that I could meet with him.”

“Mr. Cicchetti is a constitutional attorney, Mrs. Linton; he does not practice criminal law.  He works only on cases involving constitutional law.”

“I know. I…” Kris was shaking inside, but she forced herself to steady her voice and her thoughts. She was going to get only one shot at this, and if she did not get past the gatekeeper she would have no shot at all. “I want to bring a case against the federal government on behalf of my husband and brother-in-law. I want to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act.  I know that Mr. Cicchetti is very busy, and I certainly can appreciate that he works by appointment. But Michael and Jeff were arrested nearly three
months ago.  I am not allowed to visit them; I am not
even
allowed to know where they are.  The nature of their involvement with
The
Wall
website ma
kes
them high profile detainees. We don’t have a whole lot of time to get them out. This is an emergency.

“Please, if I could just have ten
minutes of Mr. Cicchetti’s time this afternoon
,
I promise you that I will not take more than that. And if he says that he doesn’t want to help us, I will drop it, and you won’t hear from me again.  Please…this is extremely important.”

Anne was thoughtful.  “I cannot promise that he’ll see you, but I will relay your message to him when he returns.  If he agrees, ten minutes is really about all that you will have.  Give me a phone number where I can reach you, and if he says that you can come in, I’ll call you and tell what time.”

“Thank you. Thank you very much.” Kris gave Anne her mobile number
,
and then she and Keith left the building.

“What do you think?” she whispered to him as they walked down the steps.

“I think we need to go find some lunch and wait to see if she calls back. There’s a cafeteria around here where the press used to hang out while we were waiting for some jackass to give us a sound bite.  We can go over there and get the world’s most expensive hamburgers and wait.”

They walked to the cafeteria and then stood in line for forty-five minutes to each get a single patty burger with
a single
dill
pickle
slice
and no other toppings.  It was expensive and pathetic-looking, but after waiting so long they were glad to finally be seated and eating.  Just as Kris raised the sandwich to her lips and opened her mouth to take a bite, she heard her phone ring.  The hamburger hit the plate with a
thud as she grabbed the phone from her purse and answered it.

“Mrs. Linton,” Anne greeted her, “Mr. Cicchetti says that he can see you
for ten minutes
at
2:00
this afternoon.”

“I’ll be there.  Thank you.”

Kris looked at her watch.
It was 1:30 and Cicchetti’s office was a thirty minute walk from the cafeteria. “I don’t have time to eat this,” she looked at her uneaten burger.  “You stay here and eat; eat mine too.  Cicchetti’s going to see me, but he’s only going to give me ten minutes. I’ll come back and fill you in as soon as I’m done.”

This time Keith did not object. He was exhausted and hungry, and no good was going to come from his jumping up from lunch to go meet with some old, out of touch guy who was probably never going to see them again anyway.

Kris half walked, half ran to Cicchetti’s building, arriv
ing at one minute before 2:00.
She checked her reflection in the compact mirror in her purse before entering.  She did not have any makeup, but she did have a little lipstick that she had saved for special occasions.  Applying it, she checked to make sure that her hair looked presentable, and then she opened the door to the offices.

“Mr. Cicchetti will see you now,” Anne was waiting for her. Behind the reception area, a door opened to a bullpen with spaces for paralegals and clerks.  A couple of employees could be seen milling around but
,
basically
,
the offices were empty. Kris surmised that Cicchetti’s practice had suffered over the past few years. Past the hallway was another set of doors, and behind those doors was a large office with
an over-sized cherry wood desk.
Julian Cicchetti rose from his chair to greet her as she entered the room.