by B K Johnson
He was anxious to go to class for another reason altogether. He had noticed a lovely Polynesian woman attending his class, who was exactly the kind of woman to whom he was attracted. She was petite, and for reasons he did not fully understand, since he was so tall himself, he always gravitated toward women who rarely reached up to his waist when he held them. He dressed carefully, and combed his hair until it was as neat as his attire. He admired himself in the mirror, the breadth of his chest, his strong arms and flat abdomen. He had made a commitment to himself that he would not take advantage of any women while they attended his class. That did not mean, however, that he couldn’t usher things along so that when the course ended a few weeks down the road, ripe fruit would be ready for the picking.
Just before he left, he decided to call Tommy. He had been meaning to tell her about Larry Young’s murder, but had been putting it off. He supposed he had been hoping that someone would have been arrested by now, so that he would be able to give Tommy a complete rundown of the motive, cause and effect. Too many weeks had passed, though, and although Larry Young had never been a favorite of Tommy’s, still he knew she would want to be informed. Surprisingly, Tommy picked up her phone after just two rings. They caught each other up on the events of their lives over the past few weeks, and Tommy congratulated Dave on his sharing his expertise in sex discrimination cases with women in the community. He told her he was interested in one of his students, and described the Polynesian beauty. Tommy just laughed and said he was incorrigible. She knew he would never act out of line while any woman was a student of his.
Then, Dave told her about Prosecutor Young’s murder. Tommy gasped, “You can’t be serious, Dave.”
“Oh, yes, I can,” he assured her, and gave her all of the details he knew. Tommy was blindsided by this information. She confided in Dave that this meant two of the people who had been a part of Kekoa’s juvenile case were now dead, Judge Julie, who had been his lawyer, and Larry Young, who had prosecuted him. “Oh, said Dave, “That’s not all. Wasn’t Hisao Yamamoto the Judge in that case,” queried Dave.
“Of course he was,” harrumphed Tommy. She had informed Dave of all the proceedings, since the sentence had resulted in Kekoa’s suicide.
“Well,” lamented Dave, “I’m sorry I’m informing you of this so late, but he was the victim of a hit and run some years ago.”
Tommy hit the roof. “Why didn’t you tell me this when we went to Judge Julie’s funeral?”
“I honestly didn’t see any connection until Larry Young was murdered, but now it seems three coincidences is two too many.”
“They sure are,” agreed Tommy, “and we will have to get to the bottom of it.”
“Sorry, Tommy, I really have to be off to class now. We’ll talk later, okay?”
“Sure, Dave. I’ll be in touch. Enjoy your class and your Polynesian girlfriend.” He laughed and hung up the phone, racing to get in his car to head to class on time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Tommy mulled over the fact that Judge Julie, Larry Young and Judge Hisao Yamamoto had all died in the last few years, with Judge Julie and Larry Young’s murders occurring within a month of each other. She had been shocked when Dave imparted this information to her, and she booted up her computer to read the reports on the murders of Young and Yamamoto. She already knew all she needed to know about Judge Julie’s insulin poisoning. Tommy had not doubt that it was murder, as Judge Julie was not the type to either commit suicide or overdose herself accidentally.
Halfway through her research, after she had uncovered the facts of Larry Young’s icepick stabbing at Kiki’s, she got a phone call from Jimmy. He still had quite a few friends from the police department, and at Tommy’s urging asked one of them, Al Minelli, to pull the hit and run report on Brandolyn Brown. Jimmy learned from Al that the vehicle involved could very well have been the old green Chevrolet owned by Judge McCaffery. Al confirmed the past accidents in which McCaffery had been involved, and informed Jimmy that most of the Judge’s friends high up on the police force had retired. There were few around any longer who gave a damn about what happened to a Judge who hadn’t been on the bench in 10 years.
This gave Tommy some breathing room. She knew she would have little success in convincing the police department they needed to issue a warrant to confiscate the Judge’s vehicle if someone higher up nixed the warrant in the bud. Jimmy had given Tommy Al’s direct line at the precinct, and Tommy shut down her computer and turned her attention to Brandolyn’s accident. She got hold of Al right away, and he said he would meet her at the Starbucks on Van Ness.
When she saw Al, Tommy was surprised to realize he had been one of the officers who had investigated her daughter, Ceci’s, death. She must have blocked his name, along with the other officers, but she had no trouble at all recalling his face. She almost turned around to leave, when he approached her somewhat diffidently.
“Tommy, please accept my apology for not going to bat for you when your daughter died. Jimmy knew you couldn’t have intentionally harmed her, and he tried to convince us. We were a hard sell because we had a hard on for you, since you defended a few scum along the way. I would really like to make it up to you now, if you would let me,” Al sincerely told her.
Tommy reluctantly accepted his apology and followed Al to a corner table. He went to get her a caramel macchiato, having learned from Jimmy it was her favorite Starbucks drink. When he returned with the hot, revitalizing elixir, she sipped at it while studying his eyes. He had deep gray eyes that went with his salt and pepper hair, and she had no doubt but that he was sincere. Just a slight bit of moisture gathered over the gray, and she knew he was trying desperately to hold back the tears.
He added, “We lost a really good lawyer when you gave up your practice, Tommy. Many of us used to joke about hiring you ourselves if we ever got in trouble.”
“Well, thanks for that, Al, but I have no intention of returning to a field I find duplicitous and wholly without justice. I much prefer my investigative business. It is much more under my control, and I don’t have to trust in the vagaries of flawed human beings in black robes. Now, speaking of flawed judges, what can you tell me about McCaffery?”
“Straight to the point as always, Tommy.” For the next half hour, Al filled Tommy in on the first two accidents the Judge had caused. While McCaffery had been cited for the first incident, the citation was conveniently “lost” in the department and the police took no further action against the former Judge. However, the DMV still had the report on file, and that was why the Judge was so concerned about losing his license. The civil suit that had been filed in the accident involving the three cars had been dismissed. In the absence of a police report ruling on fault, there were too many conflicting reports, and the contributory negligence of the car backing out negated the Judge’s negligence in striking it. After numerous depositions, the injured parties settled for insurance policy limits, resulting in the civil case dismissal. Al verified that there had been an intervention by the police commissioner on McCaffery’s behalf, and that was the real reason the police report failed to list the Judge at fault. Still, the DMV also maintained this report.
Al confirmed for Tommy that the Judge’s license plate and vehicle description did indeed match Jeremiah’s recollection. He did not question that if the Judge was at fault for Brandolyn’s death, and with charges for his consequent flight from the scene, the Judge would lose his license for good. And that he would have to do time.
It didn’t take Tommy long to convince Al that McCaffery was a danger on the roadways, and that if his license wasn’t pulled now, someone else could lose a child to his negligence. Tommy just didn’t want McCaffery convicted of the crime, losing his license and spending some time in jail. She also wanted some financial remuneration to the Brown family, so they could at least afford to get Jeremiah the psychological counseling he so desperately needed. Without evidence, however, that could place the green Chevrolet at the scene, and indeed the
Judge behind its wheel, not even an insurance company would settle the case on the Browns behalf.
At the conclusion of their discussion, Al promised to prepare a warrant for the old green Chevrolet. He assured Tommy he would handle this case himself, and even interview McCaffery. He told her it was the least he could do by way of apology for ever having suspected Tommy of harming her own child. Al patted Tommy on the shoulder, and reminded her that some good had come from her own personal tragedy. Now, whenever a child died while at home in their bed, instead of first immediately suspecting the parent at home, they first ruled out whether or not SUIDS could be the culprit. Tommy acknowledged that this was progress, but quietly wiped away the tears dripping down her face, trying so hard to remain stoic in the presence of this concerned policeman.
Al rose and told her he would get back to her as soon as he had any information for her. Once he left, Tommy still sat at the corner booth, nursing the dregs of her coffee. She was transported back in time to those horrible months after her daughter’s death. Intoning the serenity prayer like a mantra, and shaking off the residual remorse, Tommy got up. “This isn’t accomplishing anything but dragging me down into depression,” she lamented to herself. “I can be a force for good,” she encouraged herself, “instead of wallowing in despair, misery and self-pity.” She trekked solemnly to the Jetta and headed back home.
With the investigation of Brandolyn’s hit and run now well underway, Tommy gave the Browns a call. All she told them was that she was making progress and that she would have more information for them in the next few days. She asked how Jeremiah was doing, and was told he still refused to go back to school. Tommy took this as confirmation that psychological counseling was an imperative, and quieted Mrs. Brown’s sobbing with the promise that they would soon be able to afford it for their son. Mrs. Brown thanked Tommy again for her assistance, and quietly hung up the phone.
Tommy went back to her computer and began to read the account of Hisao Yamamoto’s hit and run. She couldn’t believe it had happened so long ago and she had never become aware of it. No one had ever been arrested and the old, rusted white Buick had never been located. There seemed to be no question but that the car had been propelled on purpose into the old man’s body. He had been thrown so far that there had been no hope of saving his life. He was dead before the vehicular manslaughter was even reported.
Letting her mind drag her back to the days when she represented Kekoa as his guardian ad litem in all phases of his prosecution, Tommy recalled the closed, informal courtroom scene. She saw Kekoa sitting to her left, his Aunt Maile, who had raised him, to his left. Immediately next to Maile and across from Larry Young was Julie Olson. Judge Hisao Yamamoto was at the head of the table. Then came Larry Young and next to him was Willi Akau, the guard who was accompanying Kekoa to and from the Koolau Juvenile detention center.
Just to confirm her suspicions that the murders of three of those people, as well as Kekoa’s suicide, were not chance coincidences, Tommy decided to Google the names of Maile Cabotaje and Willi Akau. What she learned shocked her to her core. The only person in attendance at the juvenile hearing and sentencing of Kekoa Cabotaje who was still alive was Gillian Tomahawk O’Malley.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
After Tommy completed her online research over Kekoa’s trial and the deaths of the participants, she was visibly shaken. A chill came over her entire body, and she couldn’t stop trembling. Convinced she was prescient, Tommy tried to figure out who would try to kill her, how and where. She went over all of her actions in the trial and knew she had done an excellent job in representing Kekoa’s best interests. She remembered Maile’s continuing support of Kekoa through all his troubles, and her sweet, maternal care of her surrogate son. Tommy had been surprised at Larry Young’s vehemence that Kekoa was a bad seed that needed to be put away for the rest of his minority. Judge Yamamoto had been more than fair, and Julie Olson’s legal defense of Kekoa nothing short of brilliant. Tommy had no recollection of Willi Akau, other than his seeming solicitousness of Kekoa.
At the crux of the problem was Kekoa himself. Accused of viciously assaulting two boys, beating one of them who had been his friend into unconsciousness, Kekoa refused to explain to the court what spurred him to attack. He explained to Tommy that Paul, the boy he pulverized, had teased him mercilessly about being a mahu. Kekoa insisted he was not gay, and just wanted to force Paul to admit he had made the accusation up. Only that way, figured Kekoa, would the other boys in school leave him alone and shut the fuck up.
Tommy pursued the issue with Kekoa, believing that if he allowed her to communicate the truth of the reason for the attack, provocation could be raised as a defense. Kekoa insisted that no mention be made of the allegation that he was gay, especially not in the presence of Maile. He was afraid this would get back to the auntie whom Kekoa was well aware was his real mother.
Tommy learned that the only gay person wholly accepted by the family was Leleo. He was Kekoa’s kumu hula and his troupe allowed Kekoa and his real mother to travel the world. Kekoa knew he could never run the risk of angering his natural mother. He so desperately wanted her love and acceptance. Maile would love him no matter what, but Kekoa recognized that Maile would explain things to his auntie and try hard to get her to accept him, too. Besides, as far as Kekoa was concerned, having had an affair with only one man did not make him gay. He did admit this much to Tommy, swearing her to secrecy. Kekoa still flirted with lots of girls, he explained. He just didn’t date them. In any case, Tommy’s job as guardian ad litem was to speak for Kekoa, and on his behalf. He persuaded her to leave the issue of homosexuality out of the proceedings.
Accepting that there was nothing she could do to change the past, only the present, Tommy turned her attention to try to identify the perpetrator of the murders surrounding Kekoa’s trial. While her mind continued to ruminate on the subject, she listed several peripheral parties such as Leleo, Kekoa’s aunties, or some other student, whether male or female. In the midst of her thought process she fell asleep, head on her desk. Jerking awake to the screaming of the phone in her ear, Tommy was jolted out of any further reflections on the past.
Al Minelli was on the other end of the line, and the excitement in his voice communicated itself to Tommy. “We’ve got him,” Al declared. He had obtained the warrant for the green Chevrolet owned by McCaffery, and investigators had definitively matched the paint from the Chevy to the paint left on the dents on Brandolyn Brown’s bicycle. The Judge was at the station this very minute being questioned by the detectives in charge of the case. Al was certain there was no way McCaffery could get out of being prosecuted this time, since the death of an innocent child was involved. He had already admitted the Chevy was his and that he was the only one who drove it.
Furthermore, Al had located a witness who placed Judge McCaffery at The Golden Duck, a Chinese restaurant only six blocks away from the Brown home. This witness saw the Judge get out of a very badly dented green Chevy, tremulous and weaving to the door of the restaurant. This transpired a mere 5 minutes from the time of the hit and run. Based upon this information, a report had already been submitted to the DMV and another one to the Judge’s insurance company, AAA. All Tommy had to do now was to call the Browns and get them to file a claim with AAA. The Judge had a $100,000 liability policy, and Al was sure the Browns could get a settlement in that amount.
Tommy was really happy to have something good to pass on to Mr. and Mrs. Brown. She thanked Al for all his hard work and expertise, and placed the call. Jerilyn Brown, Brandolyn’s mother, picked up the phone. When she heard that a former Judge had been the one to run down her daughter, she screamed. “How could that happen? How could someone who dispensed judgment on others do something so criminal and then run away from it?”
Tommy replied, “ I can’t offer any valid excuse for Judge McCaffery, and I assure you he will be fully prosecuted for his crime. His past accidents will also come into play, and you can get an attorney to
file suit if you don’t want to settle for policy limits.”
Jerilyn said she had no intention of suing anyone. She just wanted her baby back. With that, she handed the phone over to her husband, Bo. He thanked Tommy for taking the case for so little money, and for bringing it to a conclusion. He said they knew they would never have had any semblance of justice if not for her intervention.
Tommy responded, “I know nothing will ever bring Brandolyn back, or ever begin to compensate your family for your loss. I am just hopeful the insurance settlement will help you get Jeremiah the counseling he needs, and that you can now try to get on with your lives the best you can. Believe me, it is a day to day existence for quite some time.”
Bo was aware of Tommy’s loss and her experience, and commiserated with her, saying, “You just take care of yourself, Tommy. We all have to learn to trust in God and hope He knows what He’s doing. He just wanted my Brandolyn with Him, and I can’t blame him for that.”
Bo hung up and Tommy went to lie down to recover from the memories of the past threatening to wash over her all over again. Somehow she just couldn’t think that God wanted her Cece with Him. If so, He was a Selfish Bastard. If God was a female, She should have had more compassion for grieving parents.
Her rest did not last. She had been wondering what was going on with the Gages. The last she’d heard, Clayton Cox had filed for divorce on Geoff’s behalf. A deposition of Samantha had already been taken, and she had been forced to view the videotapes of her liaisons with Daniella. Samantha acknowledged her affair with Daniella. She just didn’t think it was a big deal, and gently smiled when she said “Truth is an absolute defense.”
