Deadly Judgment (Detective Sarah Spillman Mystery Series Book 5)

by Renee Pawlish

  Crawford rubbed at the stubble on his chin thoughtfully. “And you think that this killer might be coming after me?”

  Spats arched an eyebrow. “That thought has crossed our minds.”

  Crawford pushed back his chair and crossed one leg over the other. “I’m afraid you’ve reached a dead end, at least with me. Other than McCleary’s theatrics, that case was open and shut, fairly ordinary.”

  “You can’t think of anything that occurred during that case that would be pertinent now?” I asked. “Nothing besides that incident with McCleary stands out?”

  Crawford’s eyes were steady; he was unflappable. “Not at all.”

  “Did the defendant threaten you in any way?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not that I recall, and I think I would remember. I’ve been threatened only once in my life, and that man died in prison ten years ago. At the time I was threatened, the police kept track of the guy, and it turned out he was all talk. He never did anything.”

  I stared at him. “You’ve received no threatening notes recently?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Has anyone threatened you at all?”

  “No.” The corner of his mouth twitched in a faint smile.

  “You’re married?” I went on.

  He pushed at an ashtray. “If you’re thinking that my wife might’ve received a note and not told me, that isn’t the case. She wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  I shifted, and Spats took over. “Could we talk to her?”

  Crawford smiled. “Of course. She’s at the club now, but you can call her anytime, or come back later to speak with her.”

  “That would be great,” Spats said. “We have to look at everything.”

  “Of course you do,” Crawford said deferentially. “But I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t know any reason why that case would be significant now.”

  I thought for a moment. “Are you familiar with the Felix Robinson trial?”

  He raised his palms. “Just what I’ve seen in the news. Wasn’t he recently convicted of drug trafficking and sent to prison?” He opened his mouth as it dawned on him. “Oh, McCleary was the presiding judge.”

  I nodded. “Yes, and Felix Robinson threatened him. As a matter fact –”

  “Threatened how?” he interrupted.

  “Both McCleary and Nakamura received threatening notes.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They said ‘Your judgment is coming,’” I quoted one of the notes.

  He tapped his fingers together thoughtfully. “Like I said, I haven’t received any notes, let alone anything like that.”

  “Do you know the names Olivia Hartnell or Victor Marko?” I described both of them.

  He shook his head. “No, I don’t know the names, and they don’t sound familiar.”

  “No strangers around your house?” I asked.

  A shake of the head. “No. As a matter fact, we have surveillance video.” He smiled. “I got that after the one threat I did receive. If you’d like to see the video, we could go through it just to make sure.”

  Spats piped up. “That would be great if we could do that.” He gave Crawford a time frame for the video.

  “I’ll arrange for the files to be sent to you,” Crawford said.

  Spats handed him a business card, and so did I.

  “You can email either one of us,” Spats said.

  Crawford took the cards and neatly laid them on the desk. “Of course.”

  “Did you ever hear from McCleary or Nakamura?” I asked the question out of the blue and watched his reaction.

  His face was even. “No. I haven’t talked to either one of them since that trial ended. I was never friends with either one.”

  “Nobody’s threatened you recently?” I repeated.

  He sighed dramatically. “We’ve gone over that. I actually lead a quiet life. My wife and I belong to a club, we like to golf, and we’ve started to travel. We have a couple of grown sons, and some grandkids, and we’re enjoying spending time with them.” His expression was neutral. “I have nothing to fear, or to hide.”

  He was smooth with his answers, but I couldn’t quite tell if there was something else there, something he wasn’t telling us.

  “Given the situation,” I said, “would you like a security detail, or to have extra patrols around the neighborhood?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think that’s necessary.” He glanced at his watch. “I need to get going.”

  Another hint that we took. I got up, and Spats did as well.

  “Thank you for your time,” I said. “If you could get us that surveillance video, that would be helpful.”

  “Of course,” he said as he led us out of the room.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  We walked outside, and Spats pulled at the cuffs of his sleeves. “Wow.”

  I nodded. “I can’t decide what I think about him, whether he’s hiding something or not.”

  “Me, neither.” He glanced around. “Let’s see if Judge Gingrich is available.” He pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a number, had a terse conversation, and ended the call. “She’s there and will wait for us.”

  “What do you know about her?”

  “Gingrich is fifty-eight, and she’s been on the bench for twenty years. She’s from back East, did her undergrad there, then law school at Pepperdine. Married, two high-school aged girls. No social media accounts.”

  “Okay.” I headed for my car and followed Spats out of the neighborhood.

  On the way to the Denver District Courthouse, I called the station and asked Chad Lattimore to follow up with Crawford’s wife to confirm that he’d received no threats, and to get Crawford’s surveillance video. When I ended the call, I pushed away a feeling that washed over me, one of discouragement. We were running all over the place and getting nowhere.

  When we walked into Judge Francine Gingrich’s office, her receptionist nodded at us.

  “The judge is expecting you,” she said before we could introduce ourselves. She picked up a desk phone, spoke for a second, then got up and strode across the room. She tapped on the judge’s door.

  “Come in,” a commanding voice said. The receptionist opened the door and stepped aside. Spats and I walked into a large office decorated with two Bev Doolittle prints on the walls and the obligatory law books crammed into barrister bookcases. Judge Gingrich sat at a large desk, typing at a computer. She looked over her reading glasses at us. “Have a seat please. I need to finish this email.”

  Spats and I took seats at chairs across from her desk and waited for her to finish. She stared at the screen, typed, moved the mouse, seemingly oblivious to us. Music played faintly from her computer, an oldies station. I studied her framed diploma on the wall behind her. After a minute, she stopped the music and looked up at us.

  “Detectives?” We introduced ourselves. “I’m sorry, but I only have a few minutes. I really didn’t have time to meet right now, but you,” she glanced Spats, “indicated this was very important.”

  Her manner was more brusque than I would’ve expected. Spats smiled, unfazed by her manner, and I let him pour on the charm.

  “Thank you for taking the time to meet with us, Your Honor,” he said, the smile glued on his face. “I can assure you we wouldn’t be bothering you if this weren’t extremely important.”

  She made a motion as if to hurry him up. “Yes, yes. What’s going on?”

  Spats and I normally might’ve asked a polite question or two, something to put her at ease, but it was clear she didn’t want or need idle chit-chat.

  “You’ve heard about the murders of Judges McCleary and Nakamura?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Yes, security alerted us about them, and I saw news articles about their deaths. Very unfortunate.” Her tone certainly didn’t express much in the way of sympathy. “What does this have to do with me?”

  Spats frowned. “Maybe nothing, m
aybe everything. We’ve been going back through trials, when they were both litigators, to see if we can find anything in common.” Spats waited to see if she would make the connection, that she was a judge on one of those common trials.

  “And?” She eyed him carefully.

  Her brusque manner was unrelenting, and Spats shifted, a subtle signal for me to take over.

  “Before they were appointed judges, Raymond McCleary was a defense attorney, and Warren Nakamura was a prosecutor. As we’ve looked at their backgrounds, we found that both, prior to when they were judges, faced off in three separate trials.”

  “Oh?” she said.

  I nodded. “Approximately twenty years ago, you were the presiding judge on the Corey Dixon trial. He was found guilty of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. Does that case come to mind? Do you remember it?”

  She sat back and crossed her arms. “Do you know how many trials I presided over? I’ve been on the bench for a long time, and I can tell you it’s been a lot of trials. I couldn’t possibly tell you about one that occurred that many years ago.”

  “I’m sure it must be difficult,” I said sympathetically. “And we wouldn’t be asking you about this, except that it’s one of the few things we can find in common between McCleary and Nakamura. We also found that the two men recently met, even though they supposedly didn’t know each other, and Nakamura was overheard saying something about ‘three of us.’”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Who was the defendant again?”

  I gave her the basics of the trial again. She nodded thoughtfully as I talked, then uncrossed her arms.

  “I’m afraid it’s not ringing a bell.” She raked a hand through her blond hair that was going gray.

  “You don’t recall the trial at all?” I pressed.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t remember anything about McCleary at all, even when I saw the news articles. I vaguely remember Judge Nakamura. I think he was in my courtroom another time, but I don’t remember the specifics of that trial, either. And I might’ve seen him at a reception, but I can’t be sure.”

  Her manner was off-putting. Being rushed was one thing, but she seemed impatient, almost hostile toward us for trying to do our job. I wasn’t sure why she was acting the way she was, and it made me wonder whether she was being truthful or not.

  She focused on me. “So the supposition is that someone came after the two of them, and now someone will come after me because we worked on a trial together twenty years ago?” Her voice dripped with skepticism.

  “That’s a theory,” Spats interjected. “We have to look at all possibilities.”

  She waved a hand. “Oh, I’m sure you do. I just don’t see how this has anything to do with me.”

  My cell phone rang, and her eyes narrowed. I reached into my pocket and silenced it. Her look was pure annoyance.

  “Judge McCleary recently wrapped up the Felix Robinson trial,” I said, while Spats remained silent. “You’re familiar with it?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I am, but if you’re going to ask me if I know anything about Robinson, I don’t.”

  “You don’t know Olivia Hartnell or Victor Marco?”

  A description didn’t help. She shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

  “You haven’t heard from either judge recently?”

  “No,” she answered pointedly.

  “Have you received any threatening notes lately?” I asked.

  “Notes?” She pursed her lips. “No, I haven’t. The other two judges did?”

  “Yes, McCleary received three, Nakamura one.”

  “That is odd, isn’t it?” That seemed to get her attention.

  “Have you ever been threatened before?”

  She shook her head. “No, never.”

  It was a quick reply, almost too quick.

  “Have you felt like anyone was following you, anything like that?”

  “No, Detective. I feel as safe as I always do.” She glanced not at all subtly at a clock on a shelf. “I can appreciate your need to follow up on all leads with your investigation, but I can’t imagine how those murders would have anything to do with me.”

  “Even so, we could provide you with a security detail, just until we resolve our investigation,” I said.

  “If you feel that’s necessary, I won’t argue,” she said. “But I’m careful, both here and at home.”

  “Do you have a security system at your house?” Spats asked.

  She shook her head. “We have a couple of German Shepherds. They’re quite the protectors.”

  “I see,” Spats said slowly.

  She smiled without humor. “Detectives, I’ll be fine.” Another look at the time. “If I think of anything about the Dixon trial, anything that might be important, I’ll certainly call the station and let you know.” She stood up.

  Spats and I hesitated just a moment, and then we got up as well. She walked us to the door, politely thanked us, and waited as we stepped into the outer room. Then the door closed. The receptionist didn’t say a word as we walked out of the room.

  “What do you think?” Spats asked as we walked down the hall.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She wasn’t very helpful.”

  He grimaced. “I’m not sure what to make of that.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “And who was trying to get hold of you while we were talking to the judge?”

  I pulled out my phone. “It’s Hernandez. Let me call him back.”

  As I moved to the side to let some people pass, Spats’s phone rang.

  “We’re both popular,” he said.

  I nodded, leaned against the wall, and called Hernandez.

  “Judge Nakamura’s law clerk, Zach Newberry, finally called.” Hernandez was speaking fast. “He said that he’d been out of town, camping, and away from any cell phone signal.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I don’t know. I just got off the phone with him, told him that we wanted to speak to him in person. He’s at his house now, and he said that he’d wait for someone. How do you want to handle it?”

  “You wanted to be there.”

  “Yeah, but I’m still working through Nakamura’s friends, and it’d take me at least forty-five minutes to get to Newberry’s, so you should handle it.”

  “I’ll visit him myself.”

  “Let me know how it goes with him.”

  “I will.”

  I ended the call and joined Spats, who was pacing near the elevators, hands in his pockets. When I approached, he said, “Well?”

  “Zach Newberry is back in town. I’m going to go interview him now.”

  “He wasn’t returning calls, why?”

  “Camping.” He rolled his eyes, as if he thought that might be an excuse. “I know,” I said. “What about your call?”

  “They found Corey Dixon. He’s living with his sister in Aurora. How about I go talk to him while you tackle Mr. Newberry?”

  I punched the elevator button. “That sounds like a good plan. We’re stretched thin as it is. There’s so many people to try to track down and talk to.”

  He nodded. “They’ve got a lot of resources tied up with this. I hope we make a break in the case soon.”

  “I hope so, too.”

  Other people got on the elevator, so we kept quiet until we reach the lobby and went outside. As we walked to our cars, I resumed our conversation.

  “What about the other convict – oh geez, what’s the name again? The one who raped the seventeen-year-old girl.”

  “Damien Edison. And we can’t find him yet.”

  I gnawed on that. “I can’t tell if Judge Gingrich really didn’t remember the Dixon trial, or if she just didn’t want to talk to us about it,” I said.

  He donned sunglasses. “Seems like if she thought she could be a murder target, she’d take a little more interest in what we had to say.”

  I nodded. “Then again, are we looking in the wron
g direction? Maybe no one’s after these three judges at all.”

  “Could be. I do wonder, though, why McCleary and Nakamura had been talking about ‘three of them.’ Maybe it means nothing.”

  I thought about that, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Light snowflakes fell as I walked up the sidewalk of Zach Newberry’s small ranch house. Across the street, Wash Park was quiet, a lone man jogging on a path. I rang the bell and scrunched up my shoulders against the cold.

  “You’re the detective?” Zach Newberry asked when he answered his door.

  I showed him my badge. “Detective Sarah Spillman. I’m glad to finally hear from you.”

  His mouth turned down. “I was surprised when I got back into cell phone range to have messages from the police. And as you can imagine, I was even more surprised to hear about Warren.”

  He opened the door wider and motioned for me to come inside. I stepped into an open front room decorated with a mod flare, maple tables with skinny metal legs, a bright area rug in a breeze-block pattern. It wasn’t my style, but it was comfortable and inviting. He shut the door, then gestured for me to take a seat on a leather couch. He sat back and rested an arm on the back of a matching loveseat, trying for casual. He was nervous, his other hand going to his receding hairline, smoothing his short brown hair. He wore jeans and a dark blue T-shirt. His feet were bare.

  “When did you get back into town?” I asked.

  “An hour or so ago. I’d gone camping down south, in the San Juan range. I wanted to get away because …” He hesitated, and in the bright overhead light, his cheeks turned red. “Well, to tell you the truth, I’d just broken up with my girlfriend. It wasn’t pretty. We fought a lot, and I reached my limit. I just needed to get away for a few days. I didn’t want to be bothered by anything or anyone, so I took off, went camping.”

  “You last saw your girlfriend when?”