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Date Posted: 12:59:51 04/30/13 Tue
Author: fananicfan
Subject: Part 4 - The Truth Is Everything

This installment is almost over. Only the Epilogue left after this part. Sorry for the delay.


PART FOUR

FRIDAY, APRIL 24, 2009

CONFERENCE ROOM
RLSO
SAN DIEGO, CA
0830 LOCAL - 1130 EASTERN

"I know that there have been a multitude of rumors circulating through this office about what I'm going to do to meet the required budget cuts in the next quarter. Perhaps you've wondered if I'm going to do nothing, let the deadline pass and let someone in Washington decide what needs to be cut. Well, wait no longer. I've submitted a revised budget, and it's been approved," Harm said, getting down to his first order of business.

"Are we losing any staff, Sir?" This question came from a junior attorney, worried that he was going to have to go home tonight and tell his new bride that he was going to be transferred sooner than he'd communicated to her prior to their wedding.

This topic wasn't where Harm had wanted to start announcing the cuts, but it was the worst part. Once it was out in the open, none of the rest would seem so bad.

"No one will be transferred out before their regular rotation date, but we are going to lose five billets. Three are in support services, so you'll have to learn to use the copy and fax machine yourself. The other two do affect the number of attorneys that we'll have in the office. Two of you are due to rotate out in the next quarter, but no one will be rotating in to replace you. Though this will cause an increase in case loads across the board, we'll rely more heavily on reservists to handle the less time consuming, low profile cases such as the shoplifting ones that come through this office on an almost daily basis."

Harm paused to give his team of attorneys a moment to absorb what he'd just told them.

He could have sworn that he could hear the sound of people's minds trying to figure out who in the room had been here the longest and would be rotating out soon.

"Does this cut in personnel mean that you'll be taking on more cases, Sir?" Major Shelby asked.

"I'm not planning to put myself into the pool when I'm handing out cases. However, I can't say that I won't take on a case from time-to-time, especially if it'll help to keep the office from getting back-logged."

The way Commander Allen's spine stiffened at the answer to the major's question told anyone who noticed that the idea of opposing or sitting second chair to his CO in court didn't sit well with him.

"One last thing of note on the budget before we move on to our normal agenda. Repainting the offices has been cut from the budget, too."

ROOM 425
BALBOA NAVAL MEDICAL CENTER
SAN DIEGO, CA
1100 LOCAL - 1400 EASTERN

"Gabe, I need to get back to the house. I don't want to put the load on mother all day, but I'll come back tonight after the children are in bed to visit for an hour or so, okay?"

Seeing her husband that first night that she'd come to the hospital, flat on his back, pale, IV in his arm and looking helpless, had brought feelings to the surface that she'd thought were no longer there.

She'd told herself repeatedly that she didn't love him, that she couldn't love a man who treated her the way Gabe had, but seeing him in that hospital bed had made her realize that she hadn't stopped loving him. She'd just buried that fact deep inside herself.

She'd come to the hospital that first time for her children, but she'd been returning since then because she'd wanted to be there.

Part of her wondered if what he'd been through would cause him to have an awakening of who he is, or at least who he used to be, and they could be happy together again.

She placed a kiss on his cheek.

"Do you want me to bring you anything when I come back this evening?" Mrs. Hollenbeck asked lovingly.

"No, I ..." His sentence died there because the door opened and in stepped two naval officers.

"Master Chief Hollenbeck, I'm Captain Rabb and this is Lieutenant Tiner. We need to speak with you about what happened the night that you were attacked."

"I know that you have a job to do, but can't questioning him wait until he's recovered at least enough to be at home?" Mrs. Hollenbeck asked.

"We've spoken to his doctor who's assured us that he's both lucid enough and well enough to answer our questions today," Harm replied.

"It's okay," Master Chief Hollenbeck said to his wife while squeezing her hand. "I'll talk to them now, though I don't know that I can be of any help. I don't remember being attacked."

While he spoke his last sentence, his focus was no longer on the navel officers but on his wife.

HARM'S OFFICE
RLSO
SAN DIEGO, CA
1200 LOCAL - 1500 EASTERN

HARM'S POV

In front of this wife, Hollenbeck said that he had no memory of that evening.

When I had Tiner step out of the room with Mrs. Hollenbeck, the master chief did tell me that he remembered going to see our client to discuss their relationship. However, he maintained his claim that he had no recollection of anything that happened after his arrival at her apartment.

Though I've investigated enough of these types of cases to be aware that there is the possibility that he's blocking the memory of the traumatic event and not withholding information intentionally, for Tiner's educational benefit, we questioned Hollenbeck's doctor to get his opinion.

Hollenbeck's doctor would say only that it's possible that he's suppressing the memory. However, he declined to speculate any farther because mental health isn't his area of expertise.

During our discussion in the car after leaving the Hollenbecks at Bolboa, Tiner and I agreed on two things: We could understand if Hollenbeck had blocked the memory of the attack, but found it unlikely that he didn't remember anything that happened between his arrival at the Kane apartment and his attack, and secondly, that Mrs. Hollenbeck's attitude towards her husband had apparently changed since we'd spoken to her last.

The first indication that we had to the latter assumption was the fact that she was at the hospital with him. The other indicators were much less obvious but clearly there. For example, she wanted to protect him from our questioning, and the way that she looked at him while he answered our questions indicated that she was concerned about what his answers would be or how they would effect his current condition.

The master chief's actions during our interview also fed into our scenario that Mrs. Hollenbeck was still a prime suspect for being his attacker.

"I'll talk to them now, though I don't know that I can be of any help. I don't remember being attacked," he'd said as he'd held her hand, and the last sentence that he'd spoken, his focus had moved from us to his wife.

However, something as subtle as the way a person looks at someone can't be submitted as evidence in court ... and even if it were presentable, in this case, the prosecution would suggest that it wasn't the actions of a man conveying, "don't worry, I'm not going to tell them what you did", but rather a man looking to his wife for support during a difficult time.

The buzz of my intercom pulls me from my reverie.

"What is it?" I question after pressing the talk button on the intercom.

"Lieutenant Tiner is here to see you, Sir."

"Send him in," I state before releasing the button on the intercom.

HOLLENBECK HOME
SAN DIEGO, CA
1330 LOCAL - 1630 EASTERN

After talking about it in my office, Tiner and I still had nothing to support our scenario that Mrs. Hollenbeck had committed the crime or had hired someone else to do it. In fact, it was the exact opposite. Given the honesty with which she'd seemed to answer our questions, and her demeanor during our initial interview, neither of us thought that Mrs. Hollenbeck was guilty. However, we believe in the innocence of our client as well.

A major stumbling block for us is that we have no evidence that Mrs. Hollenbeck knew the identity of the woman who her husband was seeing, let alone where the woman lived, and without being able to connect her to the crime in some way, we had no plausible alternative suspect to present in court.

After nearly forty-five minutes of discussion, I told Tiner that we needed one of two things: evidence that Mrs. Hollenbeck knew with whom he'd had the affair or a confession, and that a second interview with her, one with a little more grit to the questioning might yield some answers or at least give us a clue where to look to find the missing pieces.

After a brief call to the hospital to check with the nurses' station to be sure that she wasn't there with her husband, Tiner and I had left the RLSO for the Hollenbeck home.

"Captain," Mrs. Hollenbeck says in polite greeting, but it isn't a warm welcome.

"We're sorry to drop by unannounced, but we do have a few more questions that we'd like to ask you, and we didn't think that you'd want us to ask them in front of your husband."

"I thought that you might want to talk to me again," she replies.

"You did?" Tiner blurts out.

"Yes. Come in and I'll explain," she comments as she opens the door wider to let us enter her home.

"Please, gentlemen, let's go to the living room where we can all be seated comfortably," she says, stepping past us to lead the way to the other room.

"Mother, keep an eye on the children. I have guests," she calls out.

"Who's here, dear?" a voice questions from down the hall.

"The lawyers from the other day," she answers.

Once we're all seated, she immediately begins to explain.

"I was expecting you back because I thought that you might think that I'd lied to you about my feelings for my husband."

"You did lie to us about that, causing us to question what else you could have lied about or covered up," I comment.

"No, I didn't lie....well, except to myself. You have to understand. I was so hurt after I found out about his first affair that I told myself so many times that I didn't love him any more that I started to believe it, but when I saw him lying in that hospital bed, I couldn't keep lying to myself. I don't know why after what he's done to me...to our marriage. I don't know if he deserves my love, but God help me, I do love him."

"You told us two days ago that he'd do you no good dead, but the truth is that none of his wounds were life threatening. The only risk of him dying was if he bled to death, but without any major organs or arteries hit, his doctor tells us that it would've taken a long time. Your intention was never to kill him, was it?" I ask.

"Me... I didn't....I wouldn't....I was here with my children."

"The eyewitness couldn't see the woman's face. You fit the physical desciption that was given. Your husband has had multiple affairs. He'd hurt you, and you wanted to hurt him. So you waited for him to leave her apartment and you attacked him."

"How can you think that I could ....? She's acting like she can't believe that we're pointing the finger of guilt at her. "My mother confirmed that I was at home that evening." she says, her voice cracking.

"She did confirm that you were home when she left for the evening, but she had a cooking class that night. You waited for her to leave and then you got someone to sit with the children. Then you drove to where his mistress lives and waited for him to exit her building so that you could confront him."

"That's absurd!" Mrs. Hollenbeck says in complete disbelief.

"I don't think that it's out of the realm of possibility. He told you that he wasn't going to come home, and you showed him the knife. I'm guessing that he laughed at you. He wasn't taking you seriously and he started to walk away. That's when you struck first, cutting his back across his shoulder blade."

"I didn't do that. I love him. I could never hurt him that way," Mrs. Hollenbeck says with tears streaming down her face.

"He felt the knife slash his back, so he turned to defend himself. That's when you stabbed him the second time."

"Stop...Stop..." Mrs. Hollenbeck screams.

"Yes, stop!" Mrs. Hollenbeck's mother says firmly, stepping into the room.

"My daughter did nothing to that bastard, and you will stop harassing her."

"With all due respect, ma'am, how can you be so certain that she didn't stab her husband?" Tiner asks, taking the question right out of my mouth.

Coming from the younger man, the question seemed to have been asked more out of curiosity and was less accusatory than if I'd been the one asking it.

She reaches the couch and sits down next to her daughter before answering his question.

"My daughter is a very intelligent woman most of the time, but when it comes to that man, she doesn't have a drop of sense," she replies as she pulls her daughter into her arms to comfort her. "Just the way I overheard you badging my daughter with your questions, I heard him tell her about his latest affair. I knew that there had been others, but this time there was something different about him. Unlike before, he didn't confess and then spend as much time as he could with his family as if he was sorry for what he'd done. One night about a week later, he left the house late, and I followed him. I saw which apartment building he entered, but I didn't follow him inside. I came back here and, when he got home two days later, I confronted him. He dismissed me and said that it was none of my business...that it was between him and my daughter. Part of me had to agree with that, but the part of me that wanted to protect my child couldn't let it go. However, I knew that telling her that he was still seeing that woman wouldn't convince her to leave him, so I did nothing. Then he came home a few nights later and told my daughter that he loved that woman and that he was leaving her. He spoke to her as if she'd done something wrong, not him. I was livid."

Having calmed down and obviously having heard what her mother had said, Mrs. Hollenbeck's head shoots up, leaving her mother's shoulder.

"Mother, what did you do?" Mrs. Hollenbeck asks, looking into her mother's eyes.

"I didn't go to my cooking class that night. I went to where that woman lived. The parking lot was pretty full, but I saw his car parked in front of one of the other buildings. I decided that I shouldn't park in the lot because I didn't want to risk him seeing my car, so I parked out on the street. I stood in the shadows between the two buildings so I wouldn't be seen, but I had a clear view of his car and I waited for him to come back to it. These two lawyers have the rest of the story pretty much right. I confronted him. He laughed. I stabbed him and then I just couldn't seem to stop stabbing him. I was just so angry at him for repeatedly hurting you."

"Oh, Mother!" Mrs. Hollenbeck cries out before embracing her mother.

"Everything's going to be okay, baby," she says soothingly to comfort her grown child as she strokes her long hair as one would a small child.

Even though her actions are focused on her daughter, she looks at Tiner and me. "I've been wondering how much longer I could hide what happened that night. Not only have I been having trouble living with myself knowing that I hurt another human being, no matter how much he may have deserved to be punished, I'd never want someone else to go to prison for my crime. You made my decision of when to come forward much easier ... listening to you accuse my daughter. I just couldn't let you upset her anymore. She's been through enough."

"Ma'am, you say that you didn't want anyone to go to jail for your crime, but that isn't true, is it? You did put the blood-soaked hoodie and the knife in the dumpster directly behind our client's building. You wanted her to be blamed for the stabbing, didn't you?" I ask.

"I'd been seen. I was running to get away, and then, in a moment of clarity, I realized that if the man who'd seen me had described me over the phone to the police, they'd be looking for a woman wearing a hoodie, so I took it off and threw it in the first dumpster I came to. I wasn't trying to pin what I'd done on anyone else."

"Why didn't the knife have any fingerprints on it?" Tiner asks.

"The knife came from an inexpensive set that I bought for school. The handles get slick when they get wet. I was afraid that, when I confronted him, the handle, moist from my sweating palms would slip out of my hand, so I'd wrapped the handle in a kitchen towel so that I could keep a good grip on it."

"Where's the rest of the knife set now?" I ask.

"In the trunk of my car," she answers.

"Tiner, call the police," I order.

With tears still streaming down her cheeks, Mrs. Hollenbeck speaks, "She was just protecting me. She doesn't deserve to go to jail," Mrs. Hollenbeck adds pleadingly.

"That isn't our decision to make, Mrs. Hollenbeck," I say, my tone one of compassion. "Since the incident happened off base and your mother is a civilian, we'll be turning this case back over to civilian authorities. The San Diego County District Attorney will be the one who'll make the decision on whether to charge her, and if he does, what the charge will be."

TINER HOME
CHULA VISTA, CA
1828 LOCAL - 2128 EASTERN

TINER'S POV

"Yoko, I'm home," I say loudly as I toe off my shoes on the mat just inside the front door.

"Jason?" I hear a moment before my petite wife appears in front of me.

"I'm sorry I'm late, but that case that I was working on with the captain...we got a confession out of his mother-in-law. It's over."

"I will heat up your dinner, and you can tell me all about it," she says, taking my briefcase from me.

My wife, though very fluent in English, has a hard time grasping certain concepts. Perhaps it's because of the culture in which she grew up. She's Japanese and grew up with parents who were very traditional. It isn't that she doesn't understand the idea of confidentiality, but rather that she doesn't feel that there's any reason for me to keep things from her because, as my wife, she wouldn't shame me by repeating anything that I told her.

My compromise has been to give her general information, but never names or specific details of any case, but if I continue to handle more high-profile, criminal cases, I question if any information that I give her is telling her too much.

Minutes later, I'm sitting at the kitchen table with a warm meal in front of me, and my wife is sitting across from me, patiently waiting for me to tell her about the case.

"I can't tell you anything more about the case, but there is something else that we need to talk about this evening," I inform her. "Captain Rabb has asked me if I want to continue to work on the bigger, often criminal cases, and since it would probably mean a lot of late nights, sometimes later than tonight ...maybe even calls in the middle of the night, I want to know how you'd feel about me telling the captain yes."

"Why is it that you want to do this work? Is it because you don't want to be here with me as much?" she asks before bowing her head as if she can't look me in the eye when I tell her that she's right, but she isn't correct.

I reach for her hand and hold onto it tightly, but she doesn't look at me.

"That isn't it at all," I say, but still she hasn't looked up.

I get up and move around the table until I'm standing next to her. I lift her chin with my finger until I'm sure that she can see into my eyes so that she can judge my sincerity.

"I love you. I want to spend as much time with you as I can, but what the captain is offering me...it's the job that I've been hoping to do....dreamed of having...the reason I went to law school. Captain Rabb has cautioned me not to use this one case as an example of how all cases turn out because he warned me that you don't always find out who committed the crime, especially with the certainty of a confession. He said that the reward of being a good attorney isn't in winning but in knowing that you did your best to find the truth."

"You think much of Captain Rabb, don't you?" Yoko asks.

"Yes. He's the best at what he does."

"You will be good at finding the truth, too," she says in a supportive tone.

"I hope so because, in the end, the captain is right. The truth is everything because justice cannot be achieved without it."

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Replies:

[> Wonderful chapter. I like Tiner's wife. Thank you so much for continuing this wonderful story. -- Beth, 13:41:33 04/30/13 Tue [1]


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[> another great chapter -- Bev uk, 15:04:10 04/30/13 Tue [1]


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[> Super chapter and I have really enjoyed Part 45. It was nice to see Harm........ -- Can Sheshe, 18:48:32 04/30/13 Tue [1]

in action at work with his staff and working on this case with Tiner. Thank you so much for continuing with this series and look forward to the Epilogue.


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[> Oh wow, what a great chapter. The case was so interesting. Really love seeing Harm leading his staff by example, and loved the insight into Tiner's home life - Yoko sounds lovely. This has been yet another great instalment of your wonderful series... looking forward to the epilogue. -- Dee, 11:49:35 05/01/13 Wed [1]


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[> Very interesting turn of events, Tiner is really coming into his own, a long way from The Admirals' yeoman! -- JoyZ, 11:24:37 05/02/13 Thu [1]


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[> An epilogue so soon? As long as you keep writing, I'll be right here reading. Our Tiner is growing up -- think he paid more attention at JAG than anyone thought. Love the home life for him. Now, what have the children been up to? -- carramor, 20:57:08 05/02/13 Thu [1]


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