The Judge Read online

  Praise for Randy Singer

  “Singer balances traditional legal thriller elements with Christian themes, but first and foremost, [The Last Plea Bargain] is a crime story and a cracking good one at that.”

  Booklist

  “A tale that entertains, surprises, and challenges readers to rethink justice and mercy. . . . Singer turns out another admirable legal thriller that will again draw comparisons to the inestimable John Grisham.”

  Publishers Weekly

  on The Last Plea Bargain

  “Intricately plotted, [Fatal Convictions is] an exciting legal thriller with international overtones. . . . In addition to the action and rich cultural information . . . realistic characters carry the action to its exciting conclusion.”

  Faithfulreader.com

  “Singer’s legal knowledge is well matched by his stellar storytelling. Again, he brings us to the brink and lets us hang before skillfully pulling us back.”

  Romantic Times

  on Fatal Convictions

  “Get ready to wrestle with larger themes of truth, justice, and courage. . . . Between the legal tension in the courtroom scenes and the emotional tension between the characters, readers will be riveted to the final few chapters.”

  Crosswalk.com

  on Fatal Convictions

  “Great suspense; gritty, believable action . . . make [False Witness] Singer’s best yet.”

  Booklist

  starred review

  “Randy Singer never disappoints, [and] False Witness is not just your typical legal thriller. Singer expertly combines elements of suspense, action, and intrigue into an explosive combination that really delivers.”

  Fictionaddict.com

  “Randy Singer is masterful at combining the action and suspense aspects of the novel with the scenes of legal maneuvering.”

  CBA Retailers + Resources

  on False Witness

  “A book that will entertain readers and make them think—what more can one ask?”

  Publishers Weekly

  on The Justice Game

  “Singer artfully crafts a novel that is the perfect mix of faith and suspense. [The Justice Game] is fast-paced from the start to the surprising conclusion.”

  Romantic Times

  “At the center of the heart-pounding action are the moral dilemmas that have become Singer’s stock-in-trade. . . . An exciting thriller.”

  Booklist

  on By Reason of Insanity

  “Readers will be left on the edge of their seats by Singer’s latest suspense-filled thriller.”

  Christian Retailing

  on By Reason of Insanity

  “Singer hooks readers from the opening courtroom scene of this tasty thriller, then spurs them through a fast trot across a story line that just keeps delivering.”

  Publishers Weekly

  on By Reason of Insanity

  Visit Tyndale online at www.tyndale.com.

  Visit Randy Singer’s website at www.randysinger.net.

  TYNDALE and Tyndale’s quill logo are registered trademarks of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

  The Judge

  Copyright © 2006 by Randy Singer. All rights reserved.

  Previously published as The Cross Examination of Oliver Finney by WaterBrook Press under ISBN 1-4000-7166-6.

  The Judge first published in 2012 by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

  Cover photograph copyright © John Smith/Corbis. All rights reserved.

  Author photo copyright © 2008 by Don Monteaux. All rights reserved.

  Designed by Dean H. Renninger

  Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holman Christian Standard Bible®, copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Holman CSB®, and HCSB® are federally registered trademarks of Holman Bible Publishers.

  Scripture quotations in chapter 27 and the epilogue are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations in the dedication and on the part 5 page are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version,® NIV.® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

  The Scripture quotation in chapter 39 is taken from the New King James Version.® Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Some phrases that appear to be Scripture are an amalgam or paraphrase written by the author.

  The Judge is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of the novel are drawn from the author’s imagination.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the original edition as follows:

  Singer, Randy (Randy D.)

  The cross examination of Oliver Finney / Randy Singer.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 1-4000-7166-6

  1. Death—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3619.I5725C76 2006

  813´.6—dc22 2006002431

  Repackage first published in 2012 under ISBN 978-1-4143-3568-1.

  Build: 2016-12-13 14:20:33

  To Jeanine Allen and David O’Malley, two extraordinary friends

  who each heard these coveted words in 2005:

  “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

  MATTHEW 25:23, NIV

  Contents

  Part 1: Agendas Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part 2: Contestants Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Part 3: Cross-Examination Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Part 4: Rebuttal Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Part 5: Verdict Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Epilogue

  Preview of The Last Plea Bargain

  About the Author

  Part 1

  Agendas

  I’m not afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be the
re when it happens.

  —Woody Allen

  They could have done better with an axe.

  —George Westinghouse, after witnessing the first use of the electric chair

  1

  There must be some mistake.

  The room started spinning as soon as the Patient heard the words.

  Inoperable brain cancer. Frontal lobe.

  He gripped the arms of the chair and began the denial process immediately. He never trusted this doctor in the first place and now . . . he could swear the doctor smirked when he told him. All doctors, even highly paid oncologists, envied the Patient. Hated the Patient. The doctor was wrong, his judgment blurred by a subconscious bias. Men the Patient’s age do not get brain cancer. Especially men who run three times a week and drink one glass of red wine every evening.

  Do not. Cannot.

  In the ensuing days, the Patient would get a second and third opinion. The top oncologists at the best hospitals in the country, all singing from the same song sheet. “We’re sorry, there’s nothing we can do. Chemo might slow the spread of the disease, but you probably have less than a year.” They ticked off symptoms like a parade of horrors: behavioral changes, impaired judgment, memory loss, reduced cognitive function, vision loss, partial paralysis.

  The Patient worked quickly through the stages of acceptance. Denial turned to anger. Tragedy seemed to stalk the Patient’s family. His mother died from a stroke when the Patient was in college. His sister lost a teenage son in a freak motorboat accident. A first cousin died before her thirty-fifth birthday. And now this. But anger eventually gave way to grief and then ultimately resignation—all within a span of four weeks. Yet he wasn’t prepared for the last stage, and he couldn’t shake the irony of it.

  Remorse. Nearly a billion dollars in net assets that he couldn’t take with him. Today he would trade all of his wealth for one additional year. All the eighty-hour weeks, jetting around the country, the dog-eat-dog world he faced every day, the enemies he had made—everything he did to build the net wealth so he could one day retire early and enjoy life. And now he had twelve months.

  He started getting his affairs in order. He signed a living will and durable power of attorney, spurred by the knowledge that he might lose his sanity before he drew his last breath. He changed his last will and testament a dozen times but eventually lost his enthusiasm for disinheriting the estranged children of his first and second wives. For the most part, they were young and firmly in the clutches of their overbearing and greedy mothers. No sense punishing the children. He changed it one final time and made each child a millionaire, even his rebellious fourteen-year-old daughter who reminded him way too much of her mother.

  The one thing he couldn’t prepare for preoccupied his thoughts day and night, night and day. He wasn’t ready to face whatever lurked on the other side of death. He tried praying to some vague notion of God but just felt silly. What kind of God would listen to a man who had spent his whole life denying that God existed? Yet the thought of stepping into the darkness of death without solving life’s greatest mystery scared the Patient most of all. If he were God, he would judge his own life harshly. Sure, he had accumulated vast amounts of wealth, but what good had he done? Who would say that life on earth was better because they had known him?

  The sad and honest truth kept him awake at night and haunted his daytime thoughts. Maybe there was still time. A lot could be done in twelve months. But even if he wanted to curry favor with God, how could he do that? He still didn’t really believe that God existed. And if God did exist, which of the gods worshiped on planet Earth was the true God?

  It hit him while watching Survivor, nearly four weeks after the initial diagnosis. Life’s greatest reality show! It seemed like such a deliciously good idea that it was either a stroke of genius or the brain cancer deluding him ahead of schedule. Powerful advocates for each of the world’s major religions would be chosen as contestants. Their faith would be put to the ultimate test on a remote island. They would be forced into the trial of their lives: defending their faith against all challenges. The winner’s god would gain a whole raft of new adherents, including the Patient. He would donate millions to the right causes. The ratings for the show would be spectacular.

  The losers’ gods would be exposed as impotent—powerless frauds in the face of death.

  2

  Nikki Moreno leaned around the folks in the back of the long line at the Norfolk Courthouse metal detector, propped her sunglasses on top of her head, and caught the attention of one of the sheriff’s deputies. She flashed her famous Moreno smile, and he waved her to the front. D. J. Landers, a sleazy defense attorney who had caught up with Nikki in the parking lot, followed hot on her heels. Too hot, in Nikki’s opinion. He had already hit on her twice, and now he chattered in her ear as if they were best friends, undoubtedly realizing that Nikki was his ticket to the front of the line.

  “I’m five minutes late already,” Landers said. “But as fate would have it, my hearing’s in front of Judge Finney, and I just happen to bump into his beautiful and talented law clerk this morning in the parking lot.” Landers made a little tsk-tsk noise to emphasize what an incredible stroke of luck this was. “Hey, maybe she’ll cover for me. Tell the judge she insisted I fix her breakfast after last night.”

  Nikki snorted without turning around. “We’ve got to get you off those mind-altering drugs,” she said, placing her briefcase on the belt. She sashayed through the detector, content to let the deputies ogle every inch of her long legs and masterfully designed body. Landers, on the other hand, gave her the creeps. She could feel his beady little vulture eyes drilling into her from behind, and she wanted to slap him.

  “I’ve got this one,” one of the beefy deputies said. “Total pat down. She looks dangerous.”

  “You have no idea,” Nikki shot back, picking up her briefcase as she graced the deputies with another smile. These guys were her buds, enjoying the friendship that develops between a law student clerking at the courthouse and the deputies who guard it. An attractive, young law student, that was. One not afraid to push the upper limits on skirt length or make a fashion statement with ankle and shoulder tattoos.

  Before heading away from the guards, Nikki turned to address the annoyance who had slithered through the metal detector behind her. Landers was tall and bony, forty-five or so, with a spray-on tan, a thin black mustache, and jet-black Grecian Formula hair slicked straight back. His face was all angles and bones, and Landers somehow always managed to look like he hadn’t shaved in a day and a half—no more, no less.

  “Good luck on your prisoner lawsuits,” Nikki offered, referring to the well-known practice of prisoners suing the sheriff’s department for alleged abuse. Landers looked stunned. He hadn’t said a word about any kind of prisoner suit. “A huge verdict might put an end to using Tasers altogether,” Nikki continued. “I had no idea how dangerous they were.”

  “Huh?” Landers said, reaching for his briefcase. But a deputy already had a hand on it.

  “Better run this through again,” the deputy said. “And, sir, I’ll need you to step back through there as well.”

  The other deputy winked at Nikki as she took off down the hallway. She felt safe with these guys around.

  “Have a great day,” Nikki said over her shoulder, never doubting that the eyes of the deputies would follow her down the hallway as far as humanly possible.

  Judge Oliver G. Finney opened the proceedings in Courtroom 3 with a five-minute tongue-lashing of Landers for being late, topped off with a fifteen-hundred-dollar fine—a hundred bucks per minute. “And that’s generous,” Finney claimed. He motioned to the prosecutor. “Mr. Taylor’s time alone is worth twice that much.”

  Landers gave Nikki a say-something look, but Nikki immersed herself in the papers in front of her that suddenly required immediate attention.

  Just before court, Finney, who in his spare time wrote test questions for the puzzles and games section of the La
w School Admissions Test, had given her some sample questions to try. “You know I stink at these,” she protested.

  “Precisely why I give them to you,” Finney replied. “If you get more than 25 percent of the answers correct, I know the questions are too easy.”

  Landers tendered his check, and Finney got down to the real business at hand. Nikki had glanced at the docket sheet earlier and knew that the defendant, a guy named Terrel Stokes, faced several drug charges that could earn him twenty years minimum. He slouched low in his seat at the counsel table, his movement restricted by handcuffs and leg irons. Despite the restraints and the orange jumpsuit that identified him as just one more accused felon, arrogance leached from the man like body odor.

  “We are here today,” Finney said, “because the government’s key witness in this case was brutally murdered. The prosecution wants to use a prior written statement from the witness at trial, and the defense objects. Does that about sum it up, gentlemen?”

  As the lawyers voiced their agreement and discussed procedural issues, Nikki turned her attention to the impossible word puzzle Finney had given her about where certain people sit on a bus given certain parameters. Arlene never sits next to Bill but will always take a seat beside Carli or Daphne. Daphne always sits in front of either Ella or Carli. If Carli sits next to the window in the second row and Daphne sits across the aisle, then Ella must sit . . .

  Nikki thought about it for a few seconds, grunted in frustration, and circled choice D. Last time, she had gone with straight Bs, and Finney had accused her of not trying. This time, she would vary her answers.

  Finney brought her back to the present with one of his increasingly common coughing fits. He held up his hand to the lawyers, managed a “Hold up a second,” then dipped his head and started hacking away. It was a deep and phlegmy cough, and it worried Nikki. A few seconds later, he regained control, though he still wheezed a little as he sucked in air.

  Nikki’s judge was fifty-nine and starting to show his age, though his lean face still carried vestiges of the sharp and handsome features Nikki had observed on old bar association portraits. Finney had lost most of his hair on top, but you hardly noticed the long forehead because the deep-set blue eyes demanded your attention, sparkling with mischief when Finney smiled or slicing you like lasers when he frowned. The eyes were rimmed by thick auburn eyebrows laced, like Finney’s hair and long sideburns, with distinguished amounts of gray.