There are so things you absolutely don’t want to hear right after answering a phone call at 6:27am. You know, ‘your car got destroyed by a drunk driver’, ‘power is out and cannot be restored for at least 48 hours’; that sort of thing.
What I didn’t expect on sleepily answering my cell, hitting speakerphone, and mumbling sothing into the ether was sothing that would likely top my list of bad things to hear over the phone forevermore:
“He left a package with Hounaida’s picture on it on their doorstep soti last night.”
Adrenaline had sitting up from sleep in seconds, sheets and blankets winding around my tail as it thrashed about behind .
“He what!?”
The Japanese embassy had gotten permission from NHK News to pass along the full info packet they’d received on Lady Liberty’s secret identity, and the deductions inside were, to put it far too mildly, horrifying. The stalker had sohow managed to find Mariem on social dia — actually, no, let clarify; he’d managed to track down Mariem on other people’s social dia. There were pictures of her in the background, photos of her at the mosque, at the playground, picking her daughter up from school, you na it. These had been paired with photos of Lady Liberty in costu that had been taken at similar angles, and put side by side, it was impossible to miss the resemblance.
The scariest part of it all, though, had been the date on the anonymous info package. The reveal had co out two days ago, on June 14.
NHK News told us they’d had this since June 9.
“I’ve got both my n and so of the FMB’s spooks inspecting the area as we speak,” gan continued as my heart rate leveled out, though it remained well above normal. “Waqas has work, but Mariem refuses to let Hounaida out of her sight. I managed to strong-arm my superiors into agreeing that Lady Liberty is off duty until 0700 hours tomorrow, but now I need to figure out what to do with her, let alone how to handle next—”
“Send her to .”
The words were out of my mouth before I even realized I’d begun to speak, and by then it was too late to take them back.
“… Naomi?”
“… you heard ,” I said, even as Gorou trotted into the bedroom and looked up at in mild alarm. “Send Mariem and Hounaida to . Your people picked this guy up yesterday, right? Shouldn’t he have been arraigned and remanded?”
“He posted bond.”
“… he what?”
“He posted bond,” gan repeated. “Our bad luck ans the case went before Judge Dahl, and you know how she is about avoiding any hint of impropriety.”
Judge Dahl? A case that practically lived in the gray area had gone before Judge Nancy “black and white” Dahl!?
Uuuugh!
Judge Nancy Dahl was a stickler for the rules like no other District Court judge I’d ever seen, which was what won her a unanimous appointnt to the District Court back in 2013. For the entirety of her tenure on the District’s bench, and for the twelve years presiding over the DC Superior Court before that, she advised on every single revision, andnt, and addition to the codes of judicial conduct and associated guidelines. And as could be expected, she stuck to those rules like white on rice.
It also ant that the only charge she’d be letting us get away with throwing at this guy was 18 U.S.C. 2261A, stalking. After all, he hadn’t been the one to broadcast Mariem’s na and identity all over the goddamn internet for everyone to see, aning that Dahl would just toss aside the bevy of charges that the governnt should have been able to throw at him, leaving us with nothing but the first domino to waggle at him nacingly.
God, I fucking hated Judge Dahl and her absolute refusal to consider nuance or shades of gray in her decision-making.
Especially now!
“So you’re saying she gave this fucker a bog-standard amount for bail? Are you — did she not listen to Mariem? To Waqas and Hounaida!?”
“She only let Mariem speak.”
“… she what.”
“Judge Dahl only let Mariem speak,” gan repeated. “She looked at the facts, decided only Mariem was the target of stalking and harassnt, and therefore, in her infinite wisdom, refused to let her husband or daughter speak to the charges as well.”
“Fuck!” I cursed. “And Dahl will probably see any deviation from their routines to be catastrophizing or an attempt to unduly influence her decisions, that frigid victim-blaming bitch… ugh, okay, alright. Where are Mariem and Hounaida now?”
“In a conference room down the hall from .”
“Okay,” I sighed, standing up from my bed. “Let get sothing in my stomach real quick, then send them over. I’ll keep an eye on them til your n give us the all clear on their house.”
“Copy,” gan noted. “And Naomi? Thank you again.”
“Don’t thank until this fucker is behind bars and handled,” I growled.
Then I hung up the call, let work know what the fuck was going on, grabbed the paperwork I’d need, and set about making myself ‘presentable’.
One and a half hours later, a nondescript navy sedan pulled up outside, and I opened the door to let Mariem, Hounaida, and Zara the fox into my townho.
“Apologies for the slight ss,” I said as I closed the door behind them, and waved at the papers strewn about my coffee table. “More importantly, are you all okay?” Mariem gave a look that spoke of exhaustion and frustration, but before she could say anything, Hounaida beat her to the punch.
“Is that Hello Kitty’s friend?”
I looked down at the Fenneko tank top I had on, then back up at Hounaida. In her arms, Zara had tilted her red-orange head as she too stared at the decal on my shirt.
No, there wasn’t anything extra to see that would only reveal itself at a forty-five degree angle; trust , I would know.
“She is!” I smiled, doing my best to infuse my response with delight I did not feel. “Do you and Zara want to go upstairs and say hi to Gorou? Up the stairs and keep going straight, the room at the end of the hall.”
“Kay.” Hounaida trudged upstairs without another word, the sullenness completely unlike anything I’d seen from the girl so far. A little nudge from my end ant Gorou would be ready for her, but aside from letting greatest-grandpa fox try and work his magic… I wasn’t sure what else to do for her.
“I hate seeing her like this,” Mariem confided in a low voice as she stared after her daughter. “I hate this. I hate that, that man, for this whole… just, why? Why do this to , to my family?”
“I learned years ago not to try and rationalize stalkers,” I told Mariem as I directed her towards the couch. “You’re trying to make sense of it, and that’s the problem. You can’t make sense of it. These kinds of people don’t follow rational sense. It’s skewed and twisted and wrong and…” I trailed off, ears flicking back and forth as I thought of a better way to put this. “Have you ever heard soone say that we’re all the main characters of our own stories?” Mariem nodded. “It’s that, but turned up to eleven. For people like this asshole, they’re not just the main character, they’re the inscrutable hero who can do no wrong, the one for whom the universe bends. As far as your stalker is concerned, his actions and attentions are perfect and just, therefore our attempts to stop him must be wicked and wrong.”
“And if he is the ‘hero’, then what he does is… just, to him?” Mariem’s words dripped with derision, but she seed to get the point, so I just nodded. “It just makes no sense to . I’ve been doing this for so many years, saved so many lives, and yet this man sohow believes that of all the people I’ve helped, he is sohow entitled to , allowed to possess !? And that I am sohow wrong for not wanting to let this man ‘have’ ? This isn’t, it’s… I, I don’t…”
That was when the floodgates opened, and literal years of built-up tension and anxiety poured out as Mariem started to sob.
I wasn’t sure what else to do here — God knows I’d never been good at handling crying won that weren’t , related to , or my closest friends — so I just… grabbed so tissues, handed them to Mariem, then pulled her into a hug. A part of dimly noted that had this been barely a month ago, I might well have taken so twisted asure of schadenfreude at the situation, which…
No, I realized, taking rcy upon myself by ruthlessly tearing that thought apart; maybe I wasn’t always the best person, sure, but I wasn’t one to delight in other people’s suffering. I could be petty, I could be vindictive, I could hold a grudge — but I had never, never seen sobody’s anguish and thought to laugh at it. I wasn’t like that.
And I never would be.
So I held Mariem close, offered her a shoulder to cry on, and instead considered just how much lighter my soul felt for no longer carrying a grudge against this poor woman and the mistakes we’d both made so many years ago.
We sat there, for how long I wasn’t sure, but I kept an ear on a swivel for any sign that Hounaida might be creeping downstairs; I didn’t want her seeing her mom in this state, especially since she was already scared and confused enough. Eventually Mariem’s cries trailed off, though, calming into tired-sounding sniffles and whimpers before she finally had enough and pulled back, dabbing at her eyes with the tissues I’d handed her initially.
“By Allah, I hate feeling so, so — brittle,” she murmured, voice still wet and phlegmy from her ugly cry. “I hate it. I’ve faced off with supervillains, disasters, I even handled that munafik bastard Epochal’s ridiculous ti loop hostage crisis and ca out fine, and that took a month!”
Wait, what was she — ti loop hostage crisis!?
No, no, I could ask her about that after this was over. For now, I had to focus on next steps.
“And that’s okay,” I told her gently, smiling with my ears and tail relaxed. “The difference is those were tis where you expected danger, Mariem. It’s not the sa when it hits close to ho, where you thought you were safe.”
“B-but what do I do?” she asked, and my heart broke at just how lost she sounded. “How do I make us safe, make our ho safe again?”
“That’s what you and I are going to work on today,” I said, slowly reaching to the coffee table and grabbing my laptop from its surface. “Dropping a package on your doorstep like that, with Hounaida’s picture on it? That’s an escalation, and almost certainly violates the terms of his bail. We’re waiting on gan’s people to say for certain that it was him, but in the anti, I’ll be going down to the District Court tomorrow to get a restraining order in place.”
“And what does that an?” she asked.
“It ans that if you or your family see any signs of the guy whatsoever? Or even sothing that you just think could be him? Then you just pick up the phone, dial the cops, and they go arrest him. Simple as that.”
In any other case, it wouldn’t actually be quite so ‘simple as that’, but there were enough police officers around the country who owed Lady Liberty their lives that, well… for her? It would be that simple.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Simple as that…?” Mariem sniffled again, and dabbed at her nose with another tissue as she sat back on my sofa. “Okay. Okay.” She closed her eyes and murmured sothing in Arabic that I took for a bit of self-reassurance, then looked back up at with a steely gaze. “What do you need to do?”
“Give all the information I need to write this affidavit,” I explained as I pulled up the saved template I had for affidavits filed in the District Court, saved a new copy, and filled in what information I had available. “As I’m sure you noticed, the judge we were unlucky enough to pull is law-abiding to the point of abject stupidity, so we’re going to drown her in so much information that she can’t possibly not grant our TRO without becoming the subject of ridicule to her peers.”
And if that ant Judge Dahl had to play by the spirit of the law instead of whatever she seed to interpret as the letter, then that was a nice little bonus for everyone in her courtroom.
“Start all the way at the beginning, then?” she asked.
“Just that,” I agreed. “All the way at the beginning.”
It was the work of several hours to draft the affidavit in full, broken only by a quick lunch trip to Yumi’s down by Dupont Circle, for which we dragged along not just Gorou, but also Hounaida and Zara, sohow escaping notice through the arcane art of ‘being too damn weird for people to want to look at’. For her part, Yumi had been absolutely delighted to have not one, but two foxes to pet, though we had been careful to let her know that despite her behavior being so similar to a less talkative Gorou, Zara had relatively normal dietary requirents for a canid.
I then had to babysit for an hour or so while Mariem ran out to get the affidavit notarized, during which ti I wound up introducing all thirty-seven pieces of my plushie collection to Hounaida one at a ti, complete with their nas, what they were, and how they’d co into my possession. Embarrassingly enough, Mariem got back before I’d finished, and so I had the sowhat mortifying experience of having Lady Liberty in the impromptu audience for indulging the little girl I’d never been allowed to be.
Eventually, though, Mariem’s husband Waqas pulled his car up to the curb outside my house, aning it was ti for them to return ho.
“Stay safe, okay?” I requested as I walked them out to the car. “Can you both stay ho tomorrow?”
“Waqas let know he’s taking the next week off work,” Mariem said, eyes heavy with concern. “And I will try to stay with them, but if there is an ergency…”
“Then Lady Liberty must respond,” I finished with a sigh. “I understand. Just try your best to keep gan and in the loop, alright?”
“Of course,” she nodded. “Let know how it goes in court tomorrow?”
“I will,” I promised. “Have a good evening, Mariem. I hope to have good news for you tomorrow.”
“I hope so too,” she said. “Thank you, Naomi.”
The Mouthlaki family got in the car and left. I watched them go until the car turned out of sight, then took a deep breath, sighed, and headed back inside.
It may have only partially been either of our faults, but both gan and I had failed Mariem so painfully badly with this whole debacle.
I wasn’t about to let myself fail her again.
How do you legally stop sobody from doing sothing such that use of force is on the table, at least in theory? Well, you sue them, arrest them, indict them, or the like. But let’s say you do that and… well, you need a positive result in the lawsuit to make them stop doing the thing, but you also need them to stop doing the thing now, otherwise there won’t be anything left to protect? What do you do then?
The ur-example law schools tend to use is one case or another about whether Company A is allowed to purchase xyz amount of acres of land and clear-cut it for one reason or another. In theory, they purchased the land, it’s theirs to do with as they please. In practice, the environntal impact ans what they do with their land is going to cause cascading problems for hundreds of miles around, and therefore needs to be stopped.
Here’s the problem: in this hypothetical, the lawsuit only exists because the forest hasn’t been cleared yet, and because most instances of law-breaking behavior need so kind of actual damages to have occurred, they haven’t actually broken a law. But because the lawsuit is to stop them from doing sothing that might or might not break a law in the first place, the company’s under no legal obligation to stop.
What do you do?
Now, before I answer that question, let’s pull this out of the hypothetical: Mariem’s stalker was currently out on bail pending trial on charges of stalking, which, under 18 U.S.C. Sec.2261A, carried a maximum of five years in prison for our particular case. While I know I’ve harped on the justice system actually being “guilty until proven innocent”, things get… let’s just say weird when celebrities, politicians, and especially superheroes get involved. Fact is, what the average juror sees as stalking for a regular person doesn’t quite count for people like , and that’s before we get into how paparazzi and the dia have influenced things on that front.
Anyways, back to the point: because Mariem’s stalker had posted bail, there was nothing stopping him from continuing to stalk her, as seen by the package on her doorstep yesterday morning. Now, obviously we couldn’t prove that he’d been the one to drop off the package, not until forensics ca back on the damn thing, but if it quacks like a duck…
So. Assuming that the package had been the stalker, then he’d violated his bail. But given how long forensics could take, we wouldn’t know that for an uncomfortably long amount of ti. So if we wanted sothing to make him stop, but couldn’t just send soone to arrest him without damaging our case, what could we do?
Well, we get a hearing scheduled for a preliminary injunction, and in the anti, I file a motion for a TRO — a Temporary Restraining Order.
See, preliminary injunctions are the kind of thing you can’t just do off the cuff. They are what happens when a judge says “I haven’t ruled on this yet, but until we get there, you need to cut that shit out anyway”. Rember the clear-cutting example from earlier? Yeah, that’s a good idea for it. But you can’t just file for a preliminary injunction and get it without a full-on hearing, and sotis you need to put a stop to sothing right fucking now and it can’t wait for a hearing. Well, that’s what a TRO is for.
In Washington DC, a TRO lasts 14 days, which is ant to give enough ti for scheduling a hearing and convening any witnesses or experts who need to testify as to why a full-on injunction (or in stalking and dostic violence matters, a Protection Order) is needed. A TRO also has the benefit of carrying penalties for going against it — naly, getting arrested.
Realistically, all we wanted right now was the ability to put this guy in a box and not have to worry about him ever again.
Unfortunately, in order to get us to that point… I had to deal with Judge Nancy Dahl.
Thanks to all the paperwork and other aftereffects resulting from last week’s crazy faux-hearing, Chief Judge Farley wasn’t able to pull rank and snatch this one out from under Dahl. Him taking over the case would’ve brought far too many pointed questions down on himself, on gan, on myself, and most importantly on the NMR as a whole.
… actually, now that I thought about it? I wasn’t so sure it was bad luck that got Mariem’s stalker in front of Dahl. If there was ever a way to quash or refute rumors of favoritism and other ethical concerns, shoving sothing as high-profile as this onto Judge Dahl’s case calendar would absolutely do the trick. No shuffling the schedule around to suit us. No off-the-record discussions in chambers. No greasing of the bureaucratic wheels. No secretaries slipping our important papers to the top of to-do lists.
In the eyes of Judge Nancy Dahl, your case was just a number, and the parties on the case caption only mattered when it was ti to check if they were present.
None of this did absolutely anything to ease the sheer ennui and sympathetic indignation I felt at having to watch other attorneys suffer Dahl’s wrath while I sat and waited in the back of the courtroom until it was my turn.
“Do you think this Court is suffering from an excess of free ti, Counsel?” Judge Dahl asked the defense attorney for the case currently before her. From what little I’d been able to gather, it was a dispute over the purchase at an estate auction of an old and expensive painting… which turned out to have been stolen, and the original owner was now suing the buyer for its rightful return.
“Of course not, your Honor!” the attorney said, a slight quaver in her voice as she responded. If I had to guess — and it was an educated guess, because I’d been in that poor woman’s shoes a few years ago — this was her first ti before Judge Dahl, and she was now furiously trying to figure out how she’d managed to apparently insult her badly enough to deserve such a public tongue-lashing.
“Really?” Judge Dahl deadpanned while looking at defense counsel like a bug she’d just spotted in her kitchen. “Then you simply enjoy making more work for yourself and everyone around you, is that it?”
“Your Honor, I—”
“If you are going to practice in this Court, then I should at least expect you to know the local rules, no?” Judge Dahl held up a stapled packet of papers in one hand. “And those rules explicitly lay out the format, content, and supporting docunts required for filing motions, do they not?”
“Of course, your Honor, I just fail to see how—”
“No cover page!” Judge Dahl ripped off the first page. “Case caption improperly formatted! Nondescript header that doesn’t have the grace to explain what you’re moving for! Improperly formatted citations; what, did you throw away your blue book once you’d earned your JD? You think it’s okay to just copy over whatever Lexis or Clio gives you?”
“Judge Dahl, I—”
“And last but not least: no draft order appended!” Judge Dahl turned the pages of the motion sideways, tore them in half, and tossed them down sowhere behind the bench. “Your motion is denied, counsel. You have until Monday at 8am to re-file a proper motion. Dismissed!”
Part of wanted to step outside and offer so reassurance to that poor attorney after she left the courtroom barely holding back tears, but that would’ve been a one-way ticket to Judge Dahl’s shitlist for the day. I just sat there and jotted down notes instead, using my observations of other movants and cases to refine my approach for maximum effect. Given how nasty that little spiel about wasting the Court’s ti had been, I’d have to skip the at and potatoes and go directly to the package dropping; that said, a brief aside ntioning Mariem had spoken against bail not two days ago would probably help. I’d also want to specifically bring up that the stalker had left a picture of Hounaida on the package, aning the stalker was no longer narrowly focused on Lady Liberty and now posed a risk to her family.
On the topic of the photo, though, did I want to ntion that it was the AUSA’s job to request a subpoena on the guy’s phone location data and photo library, or let her ask the question first? Both approaches had their rit, but… no, best to not bring that up. Judge Dahl was the stickler for the rules; if I were the one to ntion that, it might co off as condescension or an insult.
Three more cases ca and went, none of them any more interesting than a footnote (two interstate comrce cases and so other tort claim that only got into federal court on diversity and amount in controversy), before the clerk finally called the one I’d been waiting for.
“The next case on the docket is: Mariem Mouthlaki AKA Lady Liberty v. Stanley Mathers.”
The courtroom erupted in murmurs and several people held up their cellphones like they were trying to take pictures. I had to resist the urge to flick my ears towards each little pocket of hushed conversation and instead simply stood from the back row to make my way up the aisle. Judge Dahl had this persnickety grimace on her lips as I approached, and I was now desperately hoping it was just her being so very done with Moonshot shenanigans and not sothing—
A faint spike of emotion, of distress, prodded at the kernel of foxfire at my core.
My step faltered halfway up the aisle, and I slowed my walk as I tried to follow that sensation back. Was that Gorou? No, if he’d been in distress, I wouldn’t have been guessing as to what I’d felt. But if it wasn’t Gorou, then… I traced the connection back, felt for that indelible pathway between us, noticed the way it continued past him — but also the way it was branching. One branch pointing to a sort of nebulous up-and-across.
And another branch, faint and wavering, but there nonetheless. A branch pointing in roughly the sa direction as Gorou, but substantially further out. Was that…
(“It was truly a matter of little import. I did for the kit what my mother did for . Nothing more.”)
My ears went flat as realization hit. That wavering hint of distress I’d felt was from the little red fox that had practically been adopted by Mariem’s daughter.
It had been from Zara.
Judge Dahl started talking to the mont I arrived at counsel’s table, but I tuned her out entirely and opened up my purse to get out my phone instead. I was going to pay for this dearly if I was wrong, but on the off chance—
My phone’s screen lit up with a half-dozen notifications I’d been ignoring. One of them was the BBC News feed, showing a breaking news update:
LADY LIBERTY ARRIVES TO ASSIST AT PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY ROCKSLIDE
43 minutes ago
Breaking news? That long ago for the dia to pick up on it? Social dia had to have gotten that news out even sooner… Mariem had been on the other side of the country for an hour or so, and would be there for at least the next several hours.
That ant Waqas and Hounaida were ho alone with just Zara for protection.
And Zara was scared enough that I’d felt it.
“Counsel!? I know you can hear ! Counsel!”
I had to go.
I left my briefcase at counsel’s table and blinked directly to the back of the courtroom in a burst of violet foxfire. Judge Dahl had started screaming sothing at my back, but I didn’t wait around long enough to hear it. The hinges on the courtroom doors groaned in protest as I forced them open far faster than the old tal could probably handle anymore, and I went straight for the nearest window before flickering out onto the street.
None of the buildings around here were tall enough to easily do what I needed, shit… and the best buildings for that were a straight shot west, but I needed to get northwest. Heading west would also take over the White House’s airspace, which was a surefire way to get shot by a half dozen trained snipers, so I’d only have one chance.
I turned around, blinked over to the rooftop of the District Court building, and made one more hop to get to the northwest corner, at which point I finally realized my phone was still in my hands. I tucked that into my jacket’s inside pocket and buttoned it shut, then oriented myself and took a deep breath.
There were people on the street below. Hell, so people had seen , already had caras pointed my way. This entire thing was going to cause a panic. I didn’t have ti to care about that.
I turned to face away from the edge, and lightly hopped backwards off the roof. People scread. One second passed, almost two.
Then my body fell apart monts before impact, and I reappeared right where I’d started… with one key difference. I didn’t just bring my body and belongings with .
The montum ca along for the ride, too.
I shot off into the air, arcing upwards, and focused on the streets below. I disappeared maybe ten feet above the street, each ti sending myself back up as high as I comfortably could, until I was arcing a good three hundred feet in the air.
My eyes watered. My ears were freezing. The pressure and forces on my body felt absolutely fucking awful. But that was fine. All I had to do was let my body fall apart and I was completely fine, ready to do it all over again.
The streets blurred beneath , the G-forces threatening to crush anew with each successive reset, but I had to keep going. I had to get to Mariem’s ho, had to get to Waqas and Hounaida. I had to go faster. I had to get there in ti.
Please let get there in ti. Please.
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