Vacant (17 page)

Instead I fixed myself a glass of water and came and sat down next to her. Her body language stiffened when I sat, but I stayed anyway. I was getting more and more concerned about Tommy, about the vision, and since he'd gone to bed it was only getting worse. If Cherabino had been here, she would have said the judge was one of the apexes around which this whole case turned, and yet the judge was avoiding me. The fact that I had seen her hardly at all in two days was like a red flashing light.

“Tommy and I watched part of the trial today,” I told her, after a moment of silence.

Parson shook her head. She really didn't like having me here. “He should be doing homework.”

“He did that already,” I said. “He wanted to know what you were working on. Especially if it was important enough that he was attacked to stop it.”

“It was a bad idea. Yesterday's testimonies would have
been entirely inappropriate for a child. Today was better, but you should have checked with me about the content before you presumed to let him observe.”

“You seem stressed,” I said. In the interview rooms, this would be a real flag.

“Of course I'm stressed. I have a major media trial to preside over—one in which the ADA's star witness has disappeared—and letters containing death threats arriving at my office. Not to mention my child, whom you keep insisting on bringing into danger.”

“The star witness has disappeared?” I asked her. That was right—I'd heard about it a week ago in the papers and again from Mendez. I refused to engage with her on the her-kid-in-danger topic—I was here to help, and if she couldn't see that, she wasn't paying attention.

She nodded. “She disappeared. She was a licensed prostitute, who was supposed to testify that she saw the defendant beating his mistress to within an inch of her life that night. The lady of the night left in a hurry, so she didn't see whatever the final blow was, but it establishes a timeline and puts a considerable weight of suspicion on the defendant. The ADA says she was very concerned at depositions about her safety—it's possible she went underground for her own protection.”

“But you don't believe so,” I said.

She shook her head again. “The kind of people that work with this man . . . he's been associated with more than one serious high-level criminal. If you believe the charges, he beat Savannah's premier escort to death, breaking her jaw and thirteen bones in her body before she died. The lady of the night may have been right to fear for her safety. I have the difficult decision of whether to admit her deposition as evidence now. Taylor has a right to it, so far as it goes, but if she's left town, it does cast her credibility into doubt and the defense will use that to full advantage.”

“If someone else has made her leave town?” I asked, meaning, someone killed her.

“The police will track it down eventually. They always do. But I don't think they're going to do it in time for this trial, and I'd like to get it buttoned up enough that we're unlikely to get an appeal.”

“You think he did it. You think he killed his mistress.”

She paused for the critical moment that made me believe she did. But what she said was “I think he's entitled to a fair trial. And so will every newspaper and television station who's sent a reporter.” She paused, discomfort sitting on her strongly. “Some of them are running the story of what happened to my son.”

It felt like she was going to say something more, but then she didn't. “What are they saying?” I asked. I hadn't watched TV since I'd gotten here, but clearly the media were important to her. If they were escalating the situation with Fiske or whomever else, I probably needed to know about it.

“Some of them say I'm brave to stay around despite everything.” She seemed uncomfortable with that, and shying away from something. “Some say I'm a villain for ruling so harshly against him at times. Pappadakis has quite a following, since he's active in charity circles. They run tape of him feeding the hungry, or visiting the orphanage, and he can do no wrong. Anyone who knows the truth knows he's involved in shady deals. Anyone who knows the truth will know I'm not the criminal here. He's accused of beating a woman to death, for crying out loud. The media is being unreasonable.”

“Why are you getting attention and not District Attorney Taylor?” I asked her. “Seems strange. He's the prosecutor.”

She shrugged. “It's the reality of the situation that a woman in my position is more remarkable than a black
man in his, at least here in Savannah. Add in a child in danger, and the media will enjoy reporting.”

“It bothers you.”

“Yes, it bothers me. I preside over a jury trial! They decide innocence or guilt, not me. The ADA lays out all the damning evidence against this monster in sheep's clothing. And yet I get the time on the media with people questioning my every move. And the letters! I get death threats daily in the mail, and Taylor gets maybe one a week.” The world was an unfair and unjust place, she thought, and her ex-husband and the FBI poking around were only making it more stressful for everyone. She didn't really believe another attack was imminent, and anyway, she'd much rather focus on the things she could control and get this trial done beyond reproach.

I took a moment to reflect, to let her reflect, but she dampened down her thoughts with all the suspicions of a cop in front of a telepath. No additional information there; she didn't trust me.

So I tried a different tactic. “You realize that in all of this, you've never talked about Tommy in terms of anything but his impact on you?”

“I'm doing the best I can,” she said immediately, even though it was clear she wasn't. “I'm a single mom with a high-level critical job, and we both must adjust as best we can.”

“Why take him out of school when things get rough?” I asked. “Why not just let his father pick him up and take him for a while?”

“Quentin is a criminal,” she said, almost spitting the words. “He's a criminal and a manipulator and a liar. He'll tell you what he thinks you want to hear, and he'll use it to manipulate you, even if it doesn't make him money. Tommy will take on those qualities over my dead body. Nannies are the far better choice.”

“You don't spend a lot of time with your son,” I pushed, sensing a secret or a frustration here.

“I do the best I can!”

“You don't act like he's very important to you, and I don't understand why you would have married Quentin if you hate him so much.”

“Tommy was an accident, okay?” she said, nearly spitting the words. “Quentin deceived me and married me, and then I was pregnant. There wasn't a choice. There were only decisions. There are always decisions. I'm a single mother, and I'm doing a decent job.”

I didn't think she was, and it must have shown on my face, because she said, “You don't get to judge me. You don't get to judge me, not with your history.”

“What history?” I said, just to see how far she was going to take this.

“You don't think I do research on the people I let around my son? Does the FBI know you're still in Narcotics Anonymous?”

She was lashing out, and while it still stung, none of this was a secret from anyone. I was far more interested in what she was deflecting attention from than my own stuff right now, though maybe that was because of my phone call with Kara. Either way, I was chasing this down. “Technically that's anonymous, thus the name. In my case it's not a secret. Every employer I've ever had has known about my history and my recovery. What I need you to tell me now is, what are you hiding?”

An overwhelming sense of fear, and then anger, anger like a tidal wave.

“I'm not hiding anything,” she said, but even the most rookie interrogator in the world could have seen she was lying.

“You know I know that's a lie. Are you certain that Pappadakis is the one sending the death threats?”

I saw her consider whether to walk out, and finally settle for an angry “It's not him; it's the don, you idiot. He called me twice and as much as said who it was.”

“What does he want?”

“There's some kind of trade going on. I recuse myself from this case, or I let in suspect evidence from the defense, neither one of which I'm going to do.” A complicated set of feelings attached to all of that, and that overwhelming anger. “Because Pappadakis is under his protection or something stupid. So apparently he gets to get away with beating his mistress to death. The man thinks he's going to manipulate me into letting him throw the trial, but it's not going to work. I've got the jury sequestered, and the police are on board. Thus far we've blocked three attempts at influencing the jury members, and it's getting worse. It's a lot of pressure, but the pressure's not right. Nobody gets to flaunt the law just because of who they know. I shouldn't have to deal with this, but it's here and he's not going to flaunt the law on my watch. It's just not going to happen.”

That was all true, so far as it went. But there was something she was holding back, something more complicated, and it was almost, almost there, but it slipped out of my mental fingers like sand.

“So, when you didn't do what they wanted, they attacked your son to make you?” I asked. “Why didn't you call the FBI yourself? Were you already working with the police?”

That created yet another round of anger and complex emotions. “If you have to ask me such ridiculous questions, you're clearly incompetent. Go guard something. I have other things to do with my limited time. Like actually adjudicate.”

She stood up, sloshing her tea over the table, and walked out.

Interesting. I cleaned up the tea, trying to figure out what I'd learned, and trying to figure out if she'd try to get me fired—and if that would work. In Branen's department, the answer was probably no. Branen played politics well, but he generally played them for his own team, and she wouldn't count. Whether Jarrod played the same way or not was yet to be seen.

A lingering sense of guilt hit me, from Kara, from Parson twisting the knife. It did sting. I did feel guilty. But Judge Parson was just another interviewee, in a way. And whatever was going on with her, she was lying her ass off, and putting her son, Tommy, in potential danger along the way. She was hiding something, and she was lashing out to do it.

I wondered if she had a good reason, or if there was something deeper going on. Either way, if it got in the way of Tommy's safety, I had no patience for it. I had a kid to keep safe, and a vision to stop.

I went out
into the main area, pretty sure I was going to see the judge complaining to Jarrod, but no. It was quiet, darkened, with only a few lamps brightening the space. Jarrod was nowhere to be seen, and a quick scan of the surroundings placed his mind upstairs somewhere, asleep. The judge as well, though it took me a moment to think about it to identify her.

I worried about what was going to happen, and I worried about Cherabino's job and her sanity, with me not there for her if things went bad. Mostly I worried about me, and I tried not to think about my cravings for Satin, a cigarette, a way out.

I forced myself to be useful. I scanned the rest of the surroundings. I was here as a Minder, after all. Sridarin was out in a car across the street, along with the usual neighbors up and down it. Loyola was outside on the porch, feeling cold, bored, and watching for danger. I could see his outline faintly through the window in real space when I surfaced.

Mendez sat at the crosshatched thin folding table with a stack of paperwork. She looked up when my footsteps came within a few feet of her during the scan. Her angular face seemed more angular in the light, the lamp setting deep shadows into her face.

“Guess the paperwork never ends for most cops,” I said. Maybe she'd let me stand here awhile. She was the closest thing I had to authority I understood, to someone like Cherabino or Paulsen, rather than Jarrod, with his more complicated old-school style. She felt more familiar, and I needed familiar right now.

“How's Tommy doing?” she asked me. She was tired, bone tired, and missing her girlfriend, which I understood but wasn't allowed to comment on.

“He's okay,” I said. “Nervous. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Can you walk me through what you have with the case so far?” I asked. “Specifically with the death threats. I think I'm missing something with the judge.” If I was going to be awake anyway, I might as well be working.

“The death threats were sent by US Mail, so we had jurisdiction when the senior staff attorney called us,” Mendez said. She pushed her notebook aside and pulled over some of the stacked folders from next to her.

“Why haven't I seen the senior staff attorney?” I asked. “I've been in and out of her chambers and here at the house.”

“She's at her mother's house until all of this blows over. She was very concerned about the attack,” Mendez said. “Loyola talked to her, and all of our background checks held. She has alibis, and the judge didn't object to her being gone for the foreseeable future. If anything, they fought.”

“They fought?” I asked.

She nodded.

“What did they fight about?”

“She didn't want her to call us, supposedly, but she said she'd talked to one of the bailiffs and they thought it would be best, considering how much coverage the case was
already getting in the media. They didn't want it to turn into a conflict of interest, or the appearance of one, where the police and the prosecution are responsible for the life of the judge. Judge Parson has vigorously denied any such issues.”

“She doesn't seem to want us here,” I said. “Any idea why?”

Mendez shrugged. “She's said some things in passing, but I don't think it's as big an issue as you say it is. People don't always appreciate having federal agents around poking into their lives, and trust me, we did a lot of poking in the hours after the attack.”

I was used to being extremely involved in a case, and sitting on the sidelines with imperfect information while other people did work was frustrating me. “What kind of poking?” I asked.

“The judge had been talking to the police about the case and the jury sequestration steadily until last week, when we get half the calls logged. There was an incoming call about then, and according to the staff attorney she reacted badly. As near as we can tell, it was another death threat of higher quality. She doubled the bodyguards she already had on her son and changed her routine.”

“Which should have been enough,” I said.

“Maybe. But the attack happened anyway. And she hasn't been steady since then.”

“Do you think she's afraid for her life?” I asked.

“I don't know what I think. Jarrod's having us track down additional case details, so I'm working on that.”

“Okay,” I said. I was missing something; I knew I was missing something. “Where was Quentin in all of this? The boy's father?”

“We don't know,” Mendez said. “A lot of what I'm doing is trying to track his movements.”

“He seems genuinely loving of Tommy,” I said.

“Doesn't mean he's not threatening his ex-wife,” Mendez said. “Or behind some of these other things. A lot of times perpetrators like to hang out and watch the FBI work. I don't think it's likely, but it is one of the things we're looking at.”

“So the letters are the key. They're why you guys were called, right? Walk me through the letters again.”

She pulled them out. “As you can see, the ones we're concerned about all had that paper weld to them. Before you ask, no, that was a dead end. A library model and we couldn't get respectable fingerprints.”

I thought about that. “How long do you think this case will take?” I asked.

“I don't know. This has been a pretty strange case. We don't normally work protection duty, and most all the time we get called in on kids' cases they've already been taken. I'm not complaining. It's just impossible to say what's normal. You might ask the sheriff's department, since they handle a lot of security locally.”

“Did you ever get back a physical workup on the letters?” I asked.

She pulled another folder over. “Yes . . . yes. Assorted pollens consistent with the Southeast. The older ones seem to be from somewhere north of here, away from the ocean, some of them with Atlanta-consistent pollution markers, but the ones we're worried about change—the last one has a marsh-flower pollen on it.”

“So whoever it was was here?” I asked.

“That's what it looks like. Assuming we can trust the pollens didn't cross-contaminate. The letters were stored together.”

“Do you think we have a viable threat against the judge?” I asked. “Against her son?”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “The local air force base had a storeroom with more than a pallet's worth of equipment missing since the last inventory. There are weapons out there, more than just the ones used in the attack. Enough weapons to be a viable threat even against all of us.”

A chill went down my spine. “When was the last inventory?”

“Four months ago.”

“So someone could have stolen the military gear we saw?”

“Yes. In fact, I think it's likely that it never left the city. ATF is tracing its sale through that gun shop we were investigating.”

“You think they're going to be used against us. Whatever's left from what was stolen.”

“Yes. I see no reason to think otherwise.”

I processed that for a long moment. Just when I'd thought this situation couldn't get any worse . . .

“This case is turning into a snarl for you,” I said finally.

She shrugged. “It wouldn't be the first time the FBI coordinated between a handful of departments. Whatever it takes to get the job done, or at least that's what Jarrod says. The ATF should find the weapons before they're used.”

“Should?”

“Hopefully,” she said. “But keep your eyes open.”

*   *   *

After a night of very little restless sleep and a lot of worry, I woke up when the first ray of sunshine puddled down the wooden floor to land in my eyes. My bones hurt, again, from sleeping on a cot in the middle of a hallway. But either they didn't hurt as bad or I was more resigned to the pain; I got up and stretched, my knees protesting, before finding a stale pastry of some kind in the kitchen. I even found—and successfully made—a decent pot of simcoffee, so the day
was already working out somewhat well. That is, if you ignored the danger hanging over my head and the general lack of sleep.

People were stirring, and Sridarin was outside keeping an eye on the street. Tommy was sleeping deeply two rooms away. But no one was in the kitchen, and there was a perfectly good phone there. It was also about seven, more or less when Cherabino usually started her day. Maybe I could check in on her, have one less thing to worry about for the next few hours.

I dialed her number. It rang twice, and she picked up.

“Mmrph?” she answered. It was kinda cute.

“How's the hearing going?” I asked, probably too quickly. “You okay?”

“No,” she said, and sighed. I could hear the rustling of fabric, probably her sitting up. I could picture her rubbing her eyes.

“Did I wake you?” I asked.

She cleared her throat. “Well, I probably had to be up in fifteen minutes anyway. How's the case going in Savannah?”

“I'm making progress,” I said. “It's a nontrivial threat level. The new boss is strict, but that's nothing new. I get the feeling they're not letting me in on all the case details, but I am the Minding consultant, not the detective consultant. But the threat's bothering me, worse the longer nothing happens.”

“That's normal for any kind of protective duty,” Cherabino said.

After a moment of silence, I offered, “Still, it's strange.” I thought about mentioning that I'd seen Sibley again, but I didn't know what I would say.

She made an agreement sound, but I could tell her heart wasn't in it.

“Why aren't you okay?” I asked.

She blew out a breath. “So the lawyer called character witnesses for me. Like, half the department.”

I nodded. “She said she was going to.”

“Branen stood up for me. Boyles stood up for me. One of my ex-partners drove in from his retirement cottage on the beach just to speak up for me.”

“That's great,” I said.

“It was. It sounded good. And then . . . well, I told you they're putting it in the papers, right? Some kind of watershed police brutality charge.”

“I thought your lawyer was getting that thrown out!” I half yelled, then lowered my voice and looked around the half-empty kitchen with chagrin. “That doesn't make any sense. You were clearly set up. The date was just a coincidence. They have to know that. And the union's on your side, isn't it?”

She made a frustrated noise. “Internal Affairs doesn't think so, and they're letting reporters in the room. They never do that. The union's on my side, sure, for now, but even it doesn't want to do too much to support ‘police brutality.' Honestly I'm disgusted with the whole thing. This is everything I ever hated about politics, and if Chou wasn't there fighting for me, I'd be in a very bad place. He says at this point it's not even about me. It can't be, and he's saying . . . well, he was saying we'd beat it by getting people to speak for me. The politics are just politics, he said, and they'll blow over. But I'm not sure I believe that.”

“Why not?” I asked. “I mean, they don't really have anything but the witness testimonies, right? And those have to be overcome by the folks speaking for you.”

She took a deep breath. “Well, no. They've brought in some old things and some evidence. They pulled my file
and are reading it to the whole room. They got that rookie I hit when Stephens picked the fight with me to say I started it. And they . . . they're bringing up what happened after Peter was killed. They say I was too harsh on the guys who killed him. Too harsh!” Her voice broke. “Bastards are still breathing and they say I'm too harsh. They have to be building a case for some kind of political reason.”

“What else?”

“Isn't that enough?”

“You said evidence,” I said, my stomach knotting more and more as we went. “You don't throw around words like that without a reason. What's the evidence?”

A long pause, with her breathing not exactly steady. “They found my fingerprints on the pole. I think I told you that. The angle . . . the angle, it's what they say you'd need to beat the guy to death.”

Holy crap. I closed my eyes. I was there. It couldn't be true. It simply couldn't. Guilt and shame and hurt for her mixed up in my guts. “Could it be one left over from the fight?” I asked.

I could almost see her shaking her head. “No.”

I took a breath. “It's not like you can't fake fingerprints. I'll drive up, I'll tell them what happened, and we'll go from there. Um, I may need to bring a ten-year-old with me. Do you think we can find him a spot at the department? Maybe get Andrew to watch him?” It would break every rule they had here, but she needed me. I couldn't not go.

“What are you doing with a ten-year-old?” she asked.

“Minding, I told you.”

“You can't testify,” Cherabino said.

“I have a record, but so what? I saw what happened, and that has to matter to someone.”

“The lawyer said you can't testify. We're dating and you've already . . . it's not going to look good for me to be dating a felon. And a telepath. Okay? It's on the record, and they'll probably bring it up, but then the lawyer will bring up your records and your saving my life. I asked. Twice.”

“What do you mean it's not going to look good with you dating a felon?” She'd never used that word before. Never. It hurt.

“It's the lawyer's concern, I'm sorry. I . . .” Her voice broke. “I need you to just be okay, okay? I'm doing the absolute best that I can right now. I need you to understand. I have to get through this, and the lawyer says he has a plan. I hope—it has to work. It has to.”

“What was the third thing?” I asked, emotions tight like a guitar string with too much tension. One move would break it.