The Judgment (35 page)

Jimmy Doyle’s was one of those old-fashioned Irish places, long and narrow in front along the length of the bar, then expanding to a good-sized dining area in the back. I
marched dutifully past the bar, ignoring the array of bottles lined up there, but sneaking a peek at myself behind the jolly red faces in the long mirror. I looked the way I usually did—a bit settled and serious, older than I felt, and maybe sort of melancholy, I guess that was the word. I was the very picture of sobriety.

Stash was in the far corner of the dining room. He half stood and waved, so that I could hardly miss him in spite of the considerable crowd between us.

“I hope you’ve recovered from that loss on Saturday,” I said to him as I sat down.

“Loss?” He had his mind on other things.

“Michigan State—the football game.”

“That, oh yeah. Just wait till next year.”

The waitress came. Stash ordered a cheeseburger and fries. He already had a stein of draft in front of him.

“Shouldn’t we wait for Sue?” I asked.

“Well, I’ve got to eat,” he said. “And I’ve got to be back as near to one o’clock as I can make it. I just asked her to meet me here so I could tell her a few things. Go ahead and order.”

I asked for a Reuben sandwich and told the waitress to bring me a Diet Coke.

As she turned away to the next table, I leaned closer to Stash and asked, “How’s the investigation going?”

“Don’t you know? I would imagine you’d be better informed than me. By Sue, I mean.”

“She doesn’t like to talk about it, at least not to me.”

“Consorting with the enemy?”

“That’s part of it, I suppose. I told her when we had that fight over Sam Evans—”

“You got that straightened out, didn’t you?” Stash interrupted. “The way I handled it was all wrong. We wouldn’t be here to talk about Bud’s problem if I…”

“No, we got it straightened out, more or less. But when I was trying to talk her down, I told her that given the size of Kerry County and the number of attorneys in it, that it
was only a matter of time until we found ourselves on opposing sides.”

“Well, that’s certainly true.”

“She later admitted it was, but she still seems to treat me with suspicion. I think there are probably some areas of the investigation she shouldn’t discuss with me, but I don’t get anything at all from her. I learn more from the newspapers than I do from her. So back to my question: How’s the investigation going?”

Stash looked at me like I’d just grown a second nose. “That seems strange.”

“What does? What’re you talking about?”

“You ask how the investigation’s going. The last thing I heard I got direct from Sue this morning. I ran into her outside Mark Evola’s office, and she told me she had a new tack. She was taking a direction you’d given her. She seemed quite upbeat about it, and was asking for my help on an interrogation relating to it. That’s why she’ll be here later. But you don’t know what this new tack might be?”

I thought a moment. The only thing it could be was that bit of advice from Mark Conroy that I’d passed on to her. Yet she certainly hadn’t been very receptive when I’d told her. She seemed to wish I’d stop bothering her.

“Yeah, I’ve got an idea,” I said. “But it wasn’t something she showed much interest in.”

“Maybe she thought it over and changed her mind.”

“Maybe she did.”

As our harried waitress brought us our food, Stash suddenly blurted out what was on his mind. “I practically framed Bud for this false arrest suit,” he said.

“Okay, repeat after me, Stash—
mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Get it out of your system.”

“No, it’s true. If I hadn’t been so goddamn tricky—”

“Let’s be practical and see what we can put together to help him. What do you know about this lawyer old man Evans got in Mt. Clemens?”

“Not much. I know his name—Dietrick Dornberger—
and I know he’s young, in his twenties. He went to law school out of state.”

“Yeah? Where?”

“I think I heard someplace it was De Paul in Chicago.”

“A lot of good guys come out of there, I hear. Has he won any cases?”

“He’s won a few, mostly personal injury, all of them right in Macomb County. A couple more were settled just before the jury went out, but I hear he’s pretty good in front of a jury, too.”

“Has he ever tried a false arrest suit?” I asked.

“Not that anyone knows about.” Stash scarfed down a couple of french fries and took a big bite out of his burger.

“We ought to get hold of the transcript of one of his trials. Could you do that?”

All I got was a nod from Stash.

“We could go over it together, and then you could pass on your suggestions. John Dibble would accept them from you, but maybe not from me.”

Another nod.

“What’s Dornberger’s situation, by the way? Is he a junior partner in a firm? A full partner?”

Stash swallowed the mouthful and washed it down with a man-sized gulp of beer.

“No,” he said, “he’s on his own.”

“Really? As young as he is?” That showed some courage.

“Yeah, his father set him up. His old man’s the biggest builder in Macomb County, and he’s also his number-one client. Most of the son’s business, you won’t be surprised to learn, is real-estate law.”

Stash looked beyond me then and shot his arm up, just like he might have done at school. “Here she comes,” he said.

Whatever else she was—and she was many things to me—Sue had precisely the looks that would attract me even in a roomful of Miss Americas. There was the deep strength of her eyes, a seriousness in them now as she acknowledged
me at the table that should have warned me something big was under way.

“Sit down, Sue,” said Stash with a glance at his watch. “I’m going to have to make this fast. I’ve got to be in court in about a minute and a half.”

He crammed another bite into his mouth as he reached over to the empty chair beside him and came up with a large manila envelope, about a half inch thick.

“Now,” he began at last, “what you’ve got in here is Xeroxes from his personnel folder—not the whole file, mind you, just what I thought might be of interest.”

“Is this all I’ve got to go on?”

“Well, it’s something. Just work up what you need, the questions you want asked. Don’t try to write the script. The psychologist has his own way of phrasing the questions and working them in with others. That’s his province. He insists on it. Clear enough.”

“I won’t know until I start, will I?”

“Probably not. I’ll be back in my office sometime in midafternoon, anywhere between two-thirty and four. But I’ll need your list of questions before five. Okay?”

Sue nodded vigorously. “Okay, Stash. Really, okay.”

“We’ll talk if you need to.” He stood up and turned to me. “Charley, I’m going to stick you with the check. I got to run. Sorry.”

I waved him off, smiling. We watched him go, exchanged looks, and burst out laughing. Poor Stash! He carried the weight of the whole office on his generous shoulders. Mark Evola, the elected Kerry County prosecutor, couldn’t do much but get in the way. A couple months before, they’d hired a young assistant prosecutor—very young, right out of my old law school, the University of Detroit. Stash said he was a bright kid and would make a terrific lawyer once he had some experience, but now he was being used strictly on appeal work and can’t-lose cases. As of that moment, with one slot still open in the county prosecutor’s office, every active case in the county
fell to Stanislaus Olesky. I hoped they paid him enough to make it worth his while.

Our laughter subsided quickly enough. It seemed not only unkind, but also misdirected, for the man worked hard, too hard; we both knew that.

“What’re these questions you’re preparing?” I asked her.

“Charley, I’d really rather not—”

I held up my hand and managed to silence her. “Okay, okay. Not another word. I withdraw the question.”

“Thanks,” she said. “We may work this out yet.”

“Listen, I called a little before midday yesterday and left a message. I hope you weren’t putting in another day on this case.”

“Of course you called, Charley, and left a lovely message. But no, I wasn’t in the office, or out on Clarion Road, or Beulah Road, or in Hub City, or anyplace connected with the murders. I did what every sensible girl does when things just get to be too much.”

“What’s that?”

“I ran home to Mommy and Daddy.”

The look in her eyes told me that it was all right to laugh, so I laughed. “Well, that’s all right then,” I said, “as long as it did some good. Did it?”

“I think it did me a world of good,” she said earnestly. “As a matter of fact, it felt so good that I stayed until after ten, didn’t get home until after eleven, and decided it was too late to call you. You’ll forgive me, won’t you, Charley?”

Just as I was preparing a suitably eloquent speech, the waitress bustled up to the table. “What can I do for you, honey?” she asked Sue. She had her pad and pencil poised.

“Oh, gosh, I don’t know.” Sue said “gosh” like a kid. “I
am
hungry,” she declared. “That cheeseburger Stash had looked awfully good. Give me one of those.” And she pointed at the remains of the thing on his plate; it didn’t look that tempting to me.

“Okay, so where was I? Oh yes, you were about to
forgive me for not returning your call when I came in. I suppose you sat up staring at the telephone until one or two o’clock in the morning?”

“I was asleep before eleven.”

“How disappointing.”

“I had a pretty rough one the night before.”

I don’t know why I said that. I had no intention of elaborating on it and I certainly didn’t want to arouse her curiosity. Maybe I had some overwhelming secret desire to confide all the bloody details of the Conroy case to somebody so I could get it off my chest. Those were dangerous feelings for a lawyer under any circumstances, and in this instance they could prove positively fatal. Luckily, she wasn’t in the least interested in my night out on the town.

“One thing Mom and Dad and I settled, and that’s Thanksgiving dinner. It’s definitely on. You’re definitely expected. It’s going to be a real family occasion.”

“I’m sure I’ll love it,” I said, lying, with a smile on my face.

“I’m sure, you will, too.” There was such obvious sincerity in what she said that I confess I felt a bit guilty.

“They really are nice people, Charley. They just want the best for me.”

“As you said before.”

“That’s right.” She leaned close across the table, and without shouting over the crowd in Jimmy Doyle’s back room, she managed to make herself understood by some trick of tone, or perhaps by pure force of will.

“I want you to know,” she said, “that I’m feeling very good about us. You handled me just right Saturday night. I was a mess, total burnout. You have no idea, Charley, how this case has taken over my life. It’s not good for me, I know, and I’m trying to fight it, but it’s not easy. Anyway, you didn’t try to push me when we went out for dinner to be more communicative. And you didn’t try to draw me out to talk about it. I appreciated that. But most of all I was grateful that when I cut the evening short, you
didn’t take it personally. You were just an absolute gentleman. And for that, dear Charley, I thank you.”

This was embarrassing. Though I don’t believe I would have behaved any differently, it was also certainly true that I had my own agenda on Saturday night. If she had begged me to stay with her, I would have taken my leave from her regretfully but firmly. And so, for good reason, I felt even more guilty than I had moments before.

“And then,” she continued, “to come home last night and hear that wonderful message—‘I hope you’re fully recovered and ready to meet the week head-on. Lean on me, kiddo.’ She quoted me word for word.

“I mean, really, Charley Sloan, you’re just terrific.”

I didn’t get back to my office until a little after two. For me, the way I’d operated in Pickeral Point during the last couple of years, it was an exceptionally long lunch. Yet I didn’t feel that it was time wasted—good company, good conversation, just exactly what I’d been missing.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Fenton gave me a frown of disapproval when I came in, and she nodded to the couch. I had a visitor. It was Dominic Benda, of all people, dressed in his twill tans and pile jacket, looking quite official, except that the Kerry County Police insignias had been neatly removed; you could hardly tell they’d been there at all. He rose uncertainly from the couch and nodded. No smile.

“What’re you doing here, Dominic?”

“Uh, well, I think I might need a lawyer, Charley.”

“Please, come on into my office and tell me about it.”

I shut the door behind him. We both sat down, and I listened to his story. Although what he told me was unexpected, there had been signs, and I should have read them.

He’d been asked to come into police headquarters early this morning, no reason given. When he got there, he was hustled into Interrogation Room Three. There he was questioned with mounting aggressiveness by Sue Gillis. It
soon became obvious that he was a suspect, or at least suspected of being a suspect, in the child murders. Why? Because he had been the officer in the vicinity during the day shift when the first two of the three murders took place.

“But Charley, course I was out there,” he declared. “That’s been my territory for years. I live out in that direction. I know it real well.”

“When did you finish your shift and turn in your patrol car on those days, Dominic?” I asked him.

“Usual time, around five-thirty, maybe a little after.”

“And what about the morning out on Beulah Road? When did you start your shift?”

“Usual time, eight o’clock.”

Sue admitted to him at the end that there were some difficulties on the matter of time. But that was when the ever-popular Mark Evola made his appearance. He’d evidently been watching the interrogation through the two-way mirror. He told Dominic that he wanted him to take a lie-detector test, just to eliminate him as a suspect. When Dominic said he had some difficulty with that, Evola said that in that case there might be some difficulty continuing his pension.