Judgement Calls

by Alafair Burke

it.

  Once I saw lights coming on inside the house, I pulled out of the

  driveway. My car was racking up more miles tonight than it usually saw

  in a month. I got back onto 1-84 and drove into downtown. Cones of

  red and green rippled on the Willamette, reflecting the lights of the

  Hawthorne Bridge. I grabbed a parking spot on the street across from

  the Justice Center and took the elevator to the MCT offices on the

  fifth floor.

  Chuck was sitting at his desk, his attention focused on his computer

  screen. He didn't hear me, and I paused a moment to take a good look

  at him. I suddenly realized that for years I hadn't been seeing him

  clearly. In my mind, he still looked like he had in 1978; he had

  simply exchanged his football uniform for a badge and a shoulder

  holster. But the twenty extra pounds of bulk he'd carried as a kid

  were gone. His face was thinner, and lines had begun to mark his

  forehead and the corners of his eyes, just as they had mine.

  Working as a cop wasn't this year's sport. Whether he entered law

  enforcement initially for the thrill, to rebel against his family, or

  out of sincere dedication, he was in it now for real. With his

  father's contacts, he could have taken any career path he wanted in

  this city. But here he sat fifteen hours into his workday, at a metal

  and cork board cubicle, in front of an outdated monitor, waiting for

  his first lover to review his warrant so he could prove that a dirtbag

  like Frank

  Derringer had brutalized a thirteen-year-old heroin addict and

  prostitute in a Buick built while we were still making out under the

  Grant High School bleachers.

  For the first time, I was seeing Chuck Forbes as a man, not as an icon

  of a glorious time in my life that was over. I felt tears in my eyes,

  blindsided by the sad realization that Chuck and I were no longer kids

  and by the profound honor I felt upon finding myself walking a common

  path with him as adults.

  I hate that I get so sappy when I'm tired.

  I must have made a noise, because Chuck stopped reading and looked over

  his shoulder. Swinging his chair around, he said, "Hey, you, what's

  the matter? Did something happen when you were with Kendra?"

  I swallowed and got ahold of myself. "No, everything's fine. Just

  zoning out."

  "Good job with her tonight," he said. "It was nice to see you act like

  yourself with someone on the job. Seemed to work, too."

  "How's the warrant coming?"

  I'd ignored his comment, and he had the good sense to pretend not to

  notice. "Good. I'm done and just went over it again. If it's alright

  with you, I incorporated by reference all the affidavits from the

  warrant for Derringer's place, then I drafted a quick affidavit

  containing all the new info we got tonight."

  "That should be fine. Does the warrant authorize removal of the seats

  and carpet if that's what the crime lab needs to do to look for

  blood?"

  "Yeah, it's got the works. The car will be in pieces by the time the

  lab's done with it."

  "What did you find out about the registration?"

  "Plate comes back to a guy named" he grabbed a computer printout from

  his desktop "Carl Sommers. Last time it was registered with DMV was a

  couple of years ago. The tags expire next month. Anyway, Sommers

  filed a statement of sale with DMV about seven months ago saying he

  sold the car to a guy named Jimmy Huber."

  "What's a statement of sale?"

  "It's just a piece of paper from the registered owner saying he doesn't

  own the car anymore. It's a CYA thing in case the buyer doesn't

  re-register the car. Anyway, Sommers's sheet is clean, and it looks

  like this Huber guy never did register the car."

  "What do we know about Huber?"

  "Hold your horses, now. I'm getting there. I ran Huber in PPDS. He

  looks like a shit. Couple of drug pops and a bunch of shoplifting

  arrests and domestic beefs. He just checked into Inverness in December

  to do a six-month stint for kicking his girlfriend in the head in front

  of their baby."

  "Nice guy. What's his car doing on Milwaukee?" The Portland Police

  Data System is a fountain of data derived from police reports.

  "That's the good part. Looks like he knows Derringer's brother,

  Derrick. PPDS shows Derrick and Huber together as custody associates

  on a disc on last summer at the Rose Festival."

  Your average drunken delinquent has at least a few downtown arrests for

  disorderly conduct. For a certain type of man, the party hasn't begun

  until you're screaming and puking your guts out in an overnight holding

  cell.

  As I looked over the PPDS printouts for Huber and Derrick Derringer,

  something was bothering me, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I

  started thinking out loud. "So, Huber knows Derringer through his

  brother and sold him the car. But Derringer was still in prison when

  Huber got hauled off to Inverness."

  "Right, but he could've given the car to the brother, who then gives it

  to Frank when he gets out. The exact mechanics don't really matter.

  The point is we can tie the car to Derringer through his brother."

  He was right. In my exhaustion, I was losing sight of the big picture

  and, as usual, convincing myself that I was missing something. "No,

  you're right. It's good. You put that in your affidavit?"

  "Yeah. I think I'm done with it. You want to read it and get out of

  here? You look tired."

  "I am. I don't know how you guys pull these crazy shifts. I'm about

  to fall over."

  "It's all about the adrenaline, baby." Chuck does a mean Austin

  Powers. "You want me to rub your shoulders while you read?"

  Grace's masseuse says I have a bad habit of storing stress in my

  shoulders. Funny, I think I store it in my ass along with all the food

  I pack down when I'm freaking out. But I do get big knots in my

  deltoids after a long day, and Chuck's back rubs were heavenly. Turning

  one down was painful. "Um, I don't think that's a good idea. We're at

  work and everything."

  "Your call. If it makes you feel any better, the bureau has a woman

  come in once a month to do chair massages. It's just a relaxation

  thing, not foreplay."

  "I know. Thanks anyway."

  I finished reviewing the warrant. It was a quick read, since we were

  reusing the affidavits MCT wrote to get the warrant to search

  Derringer's house. The only new material was the information Chuck had

  added about the car.

  "Looks good," I said, as I signed off on the DA review line of the

  warrant. "Who's on the call-out list tonight?" The judges rotate

  being on call to sign late-night warrants and put out any fires that

  might arise.

  "Lesh and Hitchcock."

  Lawrence Hitchcock was a lazy old judge who smoked cigars in his

  chambers and pressured defendants to plead out so he could listen to

  Rush Limbaugh at eleven and then close up shop early to play golf. I'd

  rather swallow a bag full of tacks and wash them down with rubbing

  alcohol than risk waking up Hitchcock at eleven at night.r />
  David Lesh was the clear preference. He'd been a prosecutor for a few

  years after law school, then jumped ship to the City Attorney's office

  to work as legal advisor for the police department. He was a couple of

  years older than I was and had been an easy pick for the governor to

  put on the bench a few years back. He had a good mix of civil and

  criminal experience and was known throughout the county bar for being

  as straight-up and honorable as they come. Best of all, he hadn't

  changed a bit since he took the bench. He still worked like a fiend

  and went out for beers with the courthouse crowd every Friday. Lawyers

  missed talking to him about their cases, but we were better off having

  him as a judge.

  "Call Lesh," I advised Chuck.

  "No kidding. I had that lazy fuck Hitchcock on the Taylor case,

  remember?"

  I always forget that cops know as much about the lives of judges as the

  trial lawyers do. I suspected they gossiped about the DAs as well. In

  this specific instance, Chuck had good reason to know about Hitchcock.

  He'd presided over the very complicated trial of Jesse Taylor, a case

  that had landed Forbes on the MCT. Taylor's sixty-five-year-old

  girlfriend, Margaret Landry, confessed to Forbes that she and Taylor

  had killed a girl.

  When I started at the DA's office, Landry was the big talk around the

  courthouse. The local news covered the case's every development. Most

  stories started with the phrase, "A Portland grandmother and her

  lover...." Headlines spoke of murderous Margaret. If you asked them,

  most people who followed the case would tell you they were fascinated

  that a sixty-five-year-old grandmother and hospital volunteer

  eventually confessed to helping her thirty-five-year-old alcoholic

  boyfriend rape and then strangle a seventeen-year-old

  borderline-intelligence girl named Jamie Zimmerman.

  Forbes had stumbled into the case fortuitously. Landry initially told

  Jesse Taylor's probation officer that she read about Jamie Zimmerman's

  disappearance in the Oregonian and suspected her boyfriend's

  involvement. At the time, Chuck was working a specialty rotation,

  helping the Department of Community Corrections track people on parole

  and probation. If not for the cooperation agreement between the bureau

  and DOCC, Taylor's PO might never have told the police about Landry's

  suspicions, because Landry used to call him at least weekly to try to

  get Taylor revoked. Her claims were always either fabricated or

  exaggerated.

  Despite his hunch that Landry was at it again, the PO mentioned the tip

  to Chuck because this was the first time Landry had accused Taylor of

  something so serious as a murder. Chuck and the PO had followed up

  with several visits, and each time Landry changed her version of the

  events leading up to her accusation. The two men kept returning in an

  attempt to get her to admit that she was lying. But then she threw

  them for a loop: The reason she was sure Taylor had killed Zimmerman,

  she said, was that she helped him do it.

  The continuing amendments to Landry's story after she was arrested only

  served to whet the public's appetite. She subsequently retracted her

  confession and accused Forbes of coercing the statements from her. But

  after she was convicted by a jury, Landry confessed again and agreed to

  testify against Taylor to avoid the death penalty. When Taylor was

  convicted and sentenced to die in one of Oregon's first death penalty

  cases, she once again recanted.

  By then, however, common sense had prevailed, the hype died down, and

  people realized that Margaret Landry's confession spoke for itself. The

  grandmother who looked like Marie Callender was as deviant and sadistic

  as any man who comes to mind as the embodiment of evil. Last I heard,

  both Taylor and Landry were maintaining their innocence, and Taylor

  still had appeals pending.

  At the time, the public interest in the Jamie Zimmerman murder was

  chalked up to tabloid curiosity. I didn't see it that way; in my

  opinion, people were riveted because Margaret Landry scared them. When

  they saw her interviewed, they saw their aunt, the woman down the

  block, or the volunteer going door-to-door for the Red Cross. If she

  could abduct, rape, and murder a young woman, then locking our doors,

  moving to the suburbs, and teaching our children to avoid strange men

  would never be enough to protect us.

  Chuck's mind clearly had wandered in a different direction. "I had a

  hard enough time swallowing a death sentence on a case I worked on, but

  when it comes out of the court room of some ass like Hitchcock, I

  almost hope it does get thrown out."

  After decades without a death penalty, the Oregon legislature had

  approved one in 1988. The relatively gentle jurors of Oregon had

  delivered capital sentences to only a handful of people, and most

  people assumed that those defendants would die natural deaths in prison

  before Oregon's courts would permit an execution to be carried out.

  Despite the unlikelihood of an Oregon execution, handling murder cases

  in what was now theoretically a death penalty state still bothered

  Forbes and other people in law enforcement with mixed feelings about

  the issue. Like me, Chuck could not definitively align himself with

  either side of the debate. Unlike most knee-jerk opponents, he

  recognized that an execution could bring a kind of closure to a

  victim's family that a life sentence could not. But he continued to be

  troubled by the role of vengeance and the inherent discrimination that

  too often lay at the heart of the death penalty's implementation.

  "Where is that case anyway?" I asked.

  "Last I heard, Taylor hated prison so much he'd fired his attorneys and

  waived his appeals, but the State Supreme Court was still sitting on

  it. I almost hope they throw the sentence out. As long as the

  conviction stands, it's still a win for us."

  Maybe Chuck had finally taken a position on the issue after all.

  "Hey, enough of this. Why don't you head on home?" Chuck suggested.

  "No, I'll stay here. I'm OK."

  "You've got less sense than a thirteen-year-old. Do I have to talk to

  you like you talked to Kendra?" He counted the multitude of reasons I

  should go home on his fingers. "I probably won't even do the search

  tonight. There was a shooting a couple hours ago up in north Portland,

  so the night-shift crime lab team is probably tied up out there. The

  car's in the impound lot, so it's not going anywhere. Go home. Vinnie

  misses you."

  Vinnie is my French bulldog. He moved in with me a couple of years

  ago, the day my divorce was finalized. He gets upset when I stay out

  late.

  Chuck wrinkled up his face and pulled out his ears, like a mean-looking

  pug with bat ears. In other words, he looked like my Vinnie. "I can

  picture him right now. He's going, "Mmm, these curtains taste good.

  This carpet looks a lot better soaked with a huge puddle of French

  bulldog piss." " For whatever reason, Chuck had decided that if Vinnie

  could
speak he'd sound like Buddy Hackett.

  "You're right. I'm going home. And the search can wait until

  tomorrow. Don't you work too late either," I said.

  "Aye-aye," he said, waving his hand in a quick salute.

  I stopped as I was walking toward the door. "Will you be able to get

  your car OK?"

  "Yeah. I'll get a patrol officer to take me out there."

  I turned around again at the door. He was making copies of the

  warrant. "Hey, Chuck."

  "Huh?"

  "You're really good at what you do."

  His face softened, and his eyes smiled at me. "Thanks. Back atcha,

  babe. Now go home. You're only this sweet when you're tired."

  I drove home smiling.

  Five.

  By the time I got home, it was almost midnight. Vinnie was waiting for

  me at the door, very disappointed. In my head, I heard Chuck's Buddy

  Hackett impersonation, scolding me for being out so late.

  I threw off my coat, picked him up, made all sorts of embarrassing

  cooing noises, and scratched him ferociously behind those big goofy

  ears. When the snorts began, I knew he'd forgiven me.

  Vinnie's basic needs are met when I'm gone. He has his own door in

  back that goes out to the yard. An automatic feeder keeps him portly.

  He's even capable of entertaining himself. I'm pretty sure he thinks

  his rubber Gumby doll is his baby. But at the end of the day, he's a

  momma's boy and needs me to talk to him.

  Between work, keeping in touch with the few friends who are willing to