The Judgment (10 page)

“Go on home, Charley,” Sue said. “This is going to take a while.”

“Whatever,” I said.

“I’d feel better if you weren’t underfoot. Go home and get some sleep.”

“You, too,” I said.

“Did you see her?” she asked softly.

“Yeah.”

“Like an angel,” she said, just above a whisper. “How could anyone …” Her voice trailed off. I got in my car and drove home. The snowplows hadn’t gotten out yet, and the roads were becoming even more treacherous. I went into a skid several times, but somehow managed to regain control of the car. The memory of that sweet little face burned into my consciousness, as Sue’s question kept echoing in my mind.

How could anyone?

S
itting there alone in my kitchen, a cup of coffee in front of me, all I could do was try to put my mind on something else. I’d tried TV already. Once I’d unlocked the door and struggled out of my galoshes, I’d gone straight to the set in my living room and turned it on. I stood there a couple of minutes and stared at the screen as I switched from channel to channel with the remote. Then it struck me that this was pretty dumb. Did I really think an old movie or some inane sitcom could wipe out the picture of what I’d seen out there in the snow? I went into the kitchen and put on the water for another coffee. Did I want a drink? Yes.

I knew where I should have gone. There was a regular AA meeting that night in the basement of St. Jude’s Church. But that was clear on the other side of Pickeral Point, and by the time I got close to home, I figured it would be just about over.

No telling how long it would take to get there now in the snow. But I’d only been in the house about ten minutes at most, and I certainly needed to talk to somebody. Maybe, just maybe, Bob Williams would still be around. It-was worth a try. I grabbed my coat from the kitchen chair where I’d tossed it and headed for the door.

I was lucky. By the time I got back on the road, the snowplow had been through. With the wind whipping the
falling snow, visibility was bad. But there wasn’t much traffic, and my tires held the road at a steady twenty-five all the way to the church parking lot.

There were just two other cars when I turned in. The meeting was over, or maybe on a night like this had never begun. But one of those two cars belonged to the man I wanted to see.

He was just leaving the building with somebody else—the two-man cleanup crew. He banged the church door shut, made sure it was locked, then parted company with his companion and headed for his car. I’d pulled up beside it, motor idling, headlights on. He knew it was me.

“In case you haven’t figured it out, you’re a bit late,” he said. Through my open car window I saw that snow-flakes were already caking on his eyebrows.

“Anybody show up?”

“Some, even on a night like this. Maybe especially on a night like this.”

“I need to talk.”

“Well?”

“I noticed on the way over that Benny’s Diner’s open. Come on, I’ll help you clean off your car.”

So not much more than five minutes later, Bob Williams and I were settled in a booth at Benny’s with cups of coffee in front of us. There were a few other refugees from the storm in the place. Most of them were along the counter. One couple had claimed a booth at the other end of the line. The waitress padded back and forth, coffeepot in hand, keeping cups filled, an angel of mercy, with a sour face.

I’d have to say that Bob Williams is my best friend. Tall, big, and broad as the bow of a ship, he wore his hair in a brush cut, à la the marines. At any given moment, you half expected him to start talking about the march on Parris Island.

Robert J. Williams, M.D., a board-certified psychiatrist with a private practice in Pickeral Point, was also my AA sponsor. His heart was about the size of Texas and there
wasn’t a time I could remember that he had let me down. Like a beacon on a dark and starless night, Bob was always there.

Now he listened intently while I recounted what I’d seen under the glare of the police lights at Clarion Road. The plaid uniform, the clean white blouse, the little purse, all perfectly wrapped in plastic.

I told him about the girl’s face, too. Angelic, beautiful, innocent. And dead, very dead. It was an image I found impossible to shake.

“Well, it’s understandable,” Bob said, looking at me with concern.

“What do you mean?”

“Innocence, Charley. Cops, lawyers like you and Olesky, you don’t get to see much of it in your daily rounds. Not guilty you get to see, but very little innocence. There’s a difference, you know.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I know. I
certainly
do.”

He made a quick, little apologetic smile. “Sorry if that sounded patronizing. But look, when you see innocence in that state, defiled and destroyed, then something seems really, really wrong.”

“Yeah, that’s what bothers me.” I took a sip of coffee. He waited until I’d collected my thoughts and could go on. “You know, the twelve-step program, that’s all about the Higher Power. It depends on it. You’re sort of one-on-one with the Higher Power.”

“That’s right.”

“A lot of people want to get into the program, but they can’t accept anything to do with the Higher Power. Everything else, but not that. So they go out and try to make it on their own.”

“And mostly they fail.”

“That’s not the point.”

“What
is
the point?”

“Maybe they’re right. Maybe there is no Higher Power.”

“Charley, it’s a question as old as religion itself—any
kind of religion. You know. How can a just God allow the suffering, the destruction, of innocents?”

“All right, how can He? Sure, you can pose it as a philosophical question. You can read about all kinds of horror in the newspapers. But believe me, Bob, it’s a lot different when you see it.”

We’d been talking in a loud whisper. I don’t think anyone there at Benny’s could actually hear what we were saying. But I looked up and found the waitress and one of the men at the counter looking our way. It must have been my intensity they noticed. Maybe something wild in my eyes. Anyway, when I calmed down, they turned away.

“Charley, I’m probably not the one to talk to about stuff like this,” Bob said. “I have my problems with it all, too. Maybe what you should do is drive back to St. Jude’s, and if there are any lights on in the rectory, just bang on the door and ask for a priest. Father Phil LeClerc is okay. Better than okay.”

“Come on, Bob. You can do better than that.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Well, it helped just getting it out.”

“I’m glad of that.”

“Your usual rates?”

“Yeah. You pay for the coffee.”

Maybe it really was getting those things said to Bob Williams. Or maybe I was just plain exhausted after all that snow driving. Anyway, I fell into bed as soon as I got back home and slept right through to morning. No nightmares. No dreams of any kind, as I remember.

The sun woke me up. That’s the way the Michigan fall goes—a day of winter, followed by a week of Indian summer, then back to winter again.

By the time I got to my office, the snow was starting to melt. At the end of the day, the town would be swimming in slush. It’s not often I beat Mrs. Fenton in, but this was one of those times. Keeps her a bit off balance. I like that.

There I was in my office when I heard the outer door open. Then there were the sounds of stomping and grumbling—-grunts and what might have been words. She was taking off her boots. The outer door shut. The next thing I heard was the clicking of her heels on the hardwood floor. I coughed discreetly to announce my presence.

She appeared at the door to my office. “This is a surprise,” she said.

“Life’s full of them, Mrs. Fenton.”

“Have you turned over a new leaf?”

“Same old leaf, I’m afraid. Coffee’s ready,” I said, holding up my steaming office mug, half full. It’s one of the few things I’ve kept from my former life—black ceramic, with a legend in gold:
“Cui bono?”
The lawyer’s favorite question. “I make pretty good coffee,” I said to her. “Have some. It’s a little stronger than yours, though.” Hers was like colored water.

“No thanks,” she said primly. “I prefer to keep the enamel on my teeth.” Then she disappeared from the doorway.

“Wait till I get my second cup before you pour the pot out,” I called after her with all the stern authority I could muster.

More grumbling. Indecipherable.

Cui bono?
is Latin for
To whom the good?
In other words,
Who gains? Who profits?
You can cut through a lot of bullshit by asking that. And as I sat at my desk, going through the Mark Conroy file, that was what I was trying to do.

According to the Mouse, he had gained by fingering Conroy because he was sure that he was being set up by Conroy to take the fall for the missing funds.

Reasonable, from his point of view. But how long had these suspicions taken to develop? And when had he first decided that Conroy was helping himself to the funds? How long had the Mouse waited before blowing the whistle?

But that lunch I’d had with Jack Rivers opened up a
whole area of possibilities that now had to be seriously considered. First and foremost among them was that Chief Conroy was on the level. That anything he’d taken from the W-91 Fund he’d paid back. That the Mouse had all the transactions down in coded books, just as Conroy said.

The big question, though, was the mayor’s interest in all this. What did he gain by sending Conroy off to Jackson for ten to twelve? Revenge? Could it be as personal as all that? Conroy had looked to be pretty cozy with His Honor at one time. He certainly couldn’t have made it to deputy chief without at least an okay from the top man. Could the two of them have had a falling-out? Or something more than that? Had the mayor been so offended by him that he was reaching out to destroy him? He was known as a man you didn’t cross, and that was a burden I had to carry now—Jack Rivers had made that pretty plain.

No, more likely it was silence, or the next thing to it, that the mayor hoped to gain. It seemed to me that Conroy must have something on him. If he spoke up now, under indictment, nobody would listen. If he was convicted, then he was silenced forever.

Quite a situation.

By that time, I had worked my way through the Conroy file. But I stopped and looked again at one of the last items in it, a list of the witnesses to be called at the preliminary examination. One of them hadn’t been called. It seemed important now to know why.

I reached for the telephone, flipped over the file, and dialed the number on the cover. A woman answered. Mrs. Conroy, of course.

“Hello? Yes?” With just those two words, you could detect a certain level of tension.

“I’d like to speak to Chief Conroy, please.”

“He’s not—” She hesitated. “Who is this, please?”

“Just tell him it’s the guy who plays by tennis rules.”

“Tennis rules?” She repeated it with a frown in her voice.

“That’s right.”

She sighed. “Just a minute.”

In fact, it was more than a minute. More like three or four before Conroy came to the telephone. It seemed I could hear a brief, distant row between them as I waited. Not words exactly, just those jagged tones I remembered from my own past marriages. I was glad to be spared the details. At last he was there at the other end of the line. He answered with a curt “Yeah?”

“You recognize my voice?”

“Sure. Of course.”

“Then call me from a pay phone.”

“You really think that’s necessary?”

“Just to be on the safe side.”

“It’ll take a little while,” he said. “I just got up.”

“I’ll be waiting.” I hung up the receiver.

Deputy Chief Mark Conroy had a pretty good deal for a condemned man. Although he was on suspension, he was drawing full pay. I looked at my watch. It was after nine. Since I didn’t think he was taking his suspension as so much vacation time, it seemed pretty likely that if he was sleeping in, then he’d been out late the night before. Who with? Those friends of his who let him know where the Mouse was stashed? I wanted to know more about that. I wanted a lot more information from Conroy.

And was this cloak-and-dagger drill with the telephone really necessary? Maybe not. But the Conroys lived in Detroit, and since the long arm of the mayor reached everywhere in the city, it was probably only practical to take such precautions.

I’d finished my cup of coffee. I went out to refill my mug and got involved in a brief wrangle with Mrs. Fenton on the hours to be billed Ernie on the concealed weapon case we’d just won. I told her the retainer he paid would cover it. Mrs. Fenton, being Mrs. Fenton, wanted it exact.

“I don’t keep good logs on stuff like that. You know that.”

“Well, you should. It’s time you started.”

The telephone rang. She answered it the way she always did. “The law offices of Charles Sloan.” She listened a moment. “One moment, please.” Then, pushing the hold button, she said, “It’s that
deputy
chief.” Put him in his place, didn’t she?

“I’ll take it in there.”

As I settled down into my chair, I managed to spill coffee on the desktop. Not the first time. “Yeah,” I said into the phone. “Sloan here.”

“This is Conroy,” he said. “What was it you wanted?”

“I was prepared for a wait. You’re not calling from home, are you?”

“No. Two blocks away.”

“All right, look, I’d like you to come out here so we can have a talk.”

“Did you see the Mouse?”

“Yes. That’s part of it, but we’ve got a lot to go over.”

“When do you want me there?”

“As soon as you can make it.”

“An hour and a half?”

“If you say so. But hold on. There’s something else.”

“Okay,” he said, “what is it?” Was he sounding annoyed? He’d better not be.

“This may be important. Those friends of yours who found the Mouse—do they know where Mary Margaret Tucker is?”

There was a noticeable silence at his end: Finally, he said, “It’s possible. I doubt it.”

“Ask them. Tell them to look. I want to talk to her.”