The Conviction

by Robert Dugoni

  “Something on your mind, Archie?”

  Pike did not appreciate the nickname, but he’d given up reminding Wade. “I need to talk to the judge.”

  “What about?”

  “Private matter; you wouldn’t be interested.”

  The interior door opened. Judge Earl bounded to his desk, black robe unzipped, pausing when he saw Pike. Boykin dropped a file with a thud, shrugged from his robe, and flung it onto his chair. The robe hid much of the man’s girth. Without it, his barrel chest and belly were on full display beneath a white, short-sleeve shirt and paisley tie.

  “Did we have an appointment?” Boykin asked.

  Pike looked to Wade. Boykin raised a hand, motioning for him to get on with it while keeping busy at his desk. Wade smiled.

  “Sloane came back. He was in the clerk’s office this morning. Evelyn let me know.”

  “Filing more pleadings was he?” Boykin asked, sounding unconcerned.

  “Having files pulled.” Pike again looked to Wade, but Boykin offered no further explanation for Wade’s presence, and the severe look on his face, like the faces in the pictures on the wall, did not invite further inquiry.

  “He asked for the Tom Goode file, the one for the cost overruns at Fresh Start. He said he wanted to see the motion to disqualify filed by the city attorney.”

  “There was no motion,” Boykin said, sifting through papers.

  “That was his point.”

  Boykin stopped moving the pile. “What else did he say?”

  “He said Goode did a remodel of your home, that he’d checked the plans at the building department. Did you remodel your home?”

  Boykin ran a finger across his lips. The window at his back created a rectangle of light on the carpet. “What other files did he ask to see?”

  “The Wainwright file. For the same reason, to see whether the city attorney had filed a motion to disqualify you because you sit on First Street’s board of directors.”

  Boykin cleared his throat. “Thank you for the information, Archibald. If you hear anything else, keep me advised.”

  Pike didn’t move at first, then realized he’d been dismissed. After Pike had closed the door Boykin directed his comments to Wade. “Carrie at the bank called yesterday afternoon. She said a bank examiner has been asking for some of my loan documentation.”

  “You think it’s Sloane?” Wade asked.

  “She said it was a woman; probably someone working for Sloane though. Too big a coincidence.”

  Wade asked, “How do you want to handle it?”

  “It appears that Mr. Sloane is having a hard time getting the message.”

  “You want me to get ahold of Atkins again?”

  “We need to send Mr. Sloane a more direct message. One that ensures he knows there are consequences to his actions.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I don’t have anything in mind. Let Dillon know. That’s his arena. But tell him I want this handled in a way that does not come back to bite me in the ass. Tell him that if it does, I’m going to take a much bigger chunk out of his ass. Tell him I want it made clear to Mr. Sloane, and to the detective, that I don’t appreciate people looking into my private matters, that their two boys aren’t the only ones who might find themselves in a dung heap of trouble.”

  KNOCK-ME-STIFF RANCH

  GOLD CREEK, CALIFORNIA

  Monday night Dave Bennett brought Molia and Sloane Tupperware filled with diced chicken sauteed with onions and peppers in a mole sauce, rice, beans, and warmed tortillas. Molia had taken an afternoon nap after his all-night vigil at the Sutter Building, but awoke at the smell of food. He sat at the table looking half asleep, dark bags under his eyes, hair unkempt. Sloane was glad the bunkhouse didn’t have a mirror. He knew he didn’t look much better. The stress was wearing on both of them physically as well as mentally.

  Molia filled one of the tortillas and rolled it like a cigar, eating it with his hands as gusts of wind continued to shake the bunkhouse and whistle through the unfilled cracks in the knotted pine. The windows rattled so hard Sloane half expected them to blow out, frame and all. “This whole place might explode if we don’t open the doors and give the wind a place to pass through,” Molia said, only half joking.

  The gusts had begun late in the afternoon, rolling over the hills and across the valley, at times sounding like a high-speed train. Sloane had papers strewn across the worktable, reading with the aid of the two camp lights.

  “What did I miss?” Molia asked.

  Sloane picked up his legal pad, reviewing his notes. He’d written the names of Judge Earl Boykin and Victor Dillon on the page along with First Street, and the Sutter Building and drew lines between them each time he found an interconnecting thread.

  “Boykin takes a loan from the bank on whose board he sits as a director, ostensibly to remodel his home. He even goes so far as to get a set of construction drawings drawn up, though the contractor never pulled any permits and the work never actually happens.”

  “So he pockets the eight hundred and fifty thousand?” Molia asked, wiping the corners of his mouth with a napkin. “How does the bank reconcile that?”

  “Federal regulators frown on banks giving away money,” Sloane agreed.

  “So what? Boykin takes out the one-point-five-million-dollar loan to cover the eight hundred and fifty thousand? He’s got the same problem, only bigger.”

  “Which Alex thinks means Judge Earl has to have another income stream he’s using to pay off the loans.”

  “He’s playing a shell game.”

  “In essence.”

  “Dillon?”

  “Seems the logical choice, doesn’t it? Or maybe it’s this guy Tom Goode.” Sloane flipped the notepad so Molia could see as he spoke. “Goode got the contract to build out Fresh Start and was paid with county funds. That wasn’t a coincidence. After he finishes he manufactures two point five million in cost overruns and bills the city. When the city balks, Goode takes them to court, Judge Earl gets the case assigned to him and eventually negotiates a settlement, which just so happens to be one point five million. Only maybe the money doesn’t go to Goode,” Sloane said drawing a line between $1.5 million and Boykin. “Maybe it goes to Judge Earl to use to repay the loans to the bank.”

  “He’s washing the money?”

  Sloane didn’t know. “Alex can’t say yet. But if Judge Earl is willing to fix a case, what’s to keep him from ensuring Fresh Start remains full?”

  “So maybe we’re not as dumb as we look,” Molia said. “So then what’s Dillon’s motivation? All indications are he has more money than God.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t have the money he acts like he has. Maybe it’s one of those paper tiger things. Maybe the image is a facade. Maybe he needs a steady income stream from Fresh Start to keep the brewery afloat.”

  “Which brings us to Trinity Investments,” Molia said.

  Sloane moved one of the camp lights from a stack of papers Alex had sent that afternoon. What she’d found out about Trinity added to the intrigue. “Trinity was set up as an offshore investment company in Aruba.”

  “Aruba, the banking capital of the world,” Molia joked.

  “It’s for people trying to hide assets,” Sloane said. “And Trinity has assets. She said its portfolio is nearly half a billion dollars.”

  Molia whistled. “Did you say half a billion?”

  “Unfortunately the members of the limited liability company weren’t identified on any documents she was able to find.”

  “So Dillon could be running one of those big Bernie Madoff ponzi schemes, and Judge Earl is in on it.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if Judge Earl had his fingers in just about every pie in town,” Sloane said.

  Molia smiled. “Maybe that’s what they’re guarding in that building. Maybe that’s where they keep the records of the investors and accounts.”

  “You might be right,” Sloane said.

  “Whatever
is in there, it’s on the second floor,” Molia said.

  “But as far as you can tell the security guards don’t have a key?”

  “Not to the elevator or to the stairwell,” Molia said. “They share a single key to the front door.”

  “So even if we could get into the building somehow, there’s no way to get up to the second floor.”

  “There’s always a way,” Molia said.

  “Yeah? You gonna keep that canary in your mouth or share it?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get back from the head. But I’ll give you a hint. You can get arrested for yelling it in a crowded theater.”

  Molia took one of the lanterns with him. He had to lean his shoulder into the back door to open it in the wind then hold it tight to keep it from slamming shut. He lowered his head, walking in the knee-high grass as it whipped and swayed. Despite the wind, the temperature had not dropped and Molia likened it to the inside of a convection oven.

  The outhouse was built from the same blackened, knotted pine siding as the bunkhouse and sat atop two skids. Bennett had explained that when the Knock-Me-Stiff had been a functioning cattle ranch the building had to be moved when the hole in the ground reached capacity. Since no one had used the facility in years, that was no longer a problem. Still, Molia had visions of sitting down to do his business and having the wind propel the entire structure backward, like a runaway sled, with him inside.

  The door opened outward, the only way it could given the dimensions inside the structure, perhaps three feet square with most of that taken up by an elevated box on which the toilet seat had been attached—Bennett called it “the shitter.” It prevented the door from opening inward. Bennett had instructed them to add a scoop of lime from a sealed plastic container every other trip to aid the decomposition and keep the smell and flies down.

  Molia held the edge of the door against the battering wind and used the lantern to check for spiders along the roof and walls and around the toilet seat. He didn’t want to be sitting in the dark, thinking about things crawling up his leg or dropping on his head. When satisfied he wasn’t about to sit on a tarantula, he maneuvered inside, pulled the door shut, and flipped the rectangular piece of wood that acted as both the handle and the lock.

  Harper had fixed up the interior as best she could, hanging red and white curtains above the lone window on the back wall and putting a small vase of fake flowers on the shelf below it, beside extra rolls of toilet paper and an air freshener. Molia thought it like that old adage about putting lipstick on a pig. The moon, full but low in the sky, looked blurred through the old silica glass. Molia dropped his drawers and mooned the moon, smiling at the thought of it.

  Sitting, he had little room between his knees and the door, so he set the lantern behind him on the shitter. The “rules” to the outhouse, typed up and slipped inside a piece of plastic, hung from a nail on the door. Being a guy and having brought nothing else to read, Molia read and reread the rules.

  1. Use only as much toilet paper as you need.

  2. When finished, apply one scoop of lime into the hole.

  3. Make sure to reseal lime bag, as it will absorb moisture.

  4. Lower the toilet seat lid.

  5. Make sure handel to door to outhouse is turned to the left to keep door from blowing open and banging in wind.

  The third time through he noticed the misspelled word.

  “Handel,” he said out loud.

  The door rattled—a particularly strong gust followed by an odd thump, and for a moment Molia thought his premonition about being propelled backward across the yard might come true. Then he noticed the door had bowed inward an inch or two. When it did not self-correct he reached out, turned the rectangular piece of wood, and pushed. The door flexed but did not fly open, as he would have expected, given the howling wind. He leaned forward and shoved harder, feeling the resistance.

  Standing, he pressed his shoulder against the wood but the door still did not budge.

  That’s when he smelled gasoline.

  EIGHTEEN

  FRESH START YOUTH TRAINING FACILITY

  SIERRA NEVADA MOUNTAINS

  True to his sadistic word, Atkins met them as they walked out of the building after their last class of the day. The other inmates gave the guard a wide berth. No such luck for Jake, T.J., Bee Dee, and Henry. Atkins wore his usual sunglasses and shit-eating grin, but the wide-brimmed cowboy hat was new.

  “Time to load up, boys. Daylights burning, and we have miles to go before we sleep,” he said.

  Jake thought Atkins misquoting the American poet Robert Frost had to be a coincidence. He’d studied Frost that year in school, though it now seemed a lifetime ago. He couldn’t imagine Atkins had ever cracked a book in his life, let alone read a poem.

  Atkins accompanied them to their dorm and handed each a small sack, watching as they packed extra pairs of undershorts and T-shirts as well as their toothbrushes.

  Outside, he escorted them down the footpath to the horse stables. De la Cruz had loaded two of the horses and was in the process of loading the obstinate donkey into the back of a white, four-horse trailer showing signs of rust. De la Cruz cursed the beast in Spanish when it failed to cooperate, and it stuck out its head and brayed its displeasure. As if in answer, the second donkey, still in the barn, brayed back. Atkins slapped the donkey hard on the ass and it trotted up the ramp and inside the trailer, its metal shoes thumping like someone beating the inside of a metal drum.

  “Sometimes all a dumb animal knows is brute force,” Atkins said, looking directly at Jake.

  Atkins directed T.J. and Henry to get two bales of hay and two bales of straw from the barn and handed Jake and Bee Dee two long hooks with wood handles and instructed them to get on top of the horse trailer. When T.J. and Henry returned he instructed them to load the hay atop the trailer and they attempted to comply. They lifted the bales overhead, teetering off balance before righting. They dropped the first bale twice—before Atkins shoved them out of the way and lifted the bale overhead by himself, high enough for Jake and Bee Dee to reach over the side of the trailer and sink their hooks beneath the wires holding the bales in shape. Even then it was difficult to hoist the bale up onto the roof. When they had the second bale in place they secured both with netting.

  After they had climbed down, De la Cruz instructed them to load the straw in the empty fourth stall inside the trailer. The horses continued stomping, and the donkey continued to bray. When they had finished De la Cruz closed the gate with a thud and flipped the handle but did not lock it. He climbed into the cab, and the engine started with a sputter of burned diesel before settling into a steady knocking.

  Atkins directed them to follow the truck down a dirt road parallel to the back fence. They jogged to keep up, covering their mouths to keep from breathing the cloud of dust kicked up by the truck and trailer. De la Cruz parked beside the metal shed near the garden and Atkins put them to work hauling out supplies—stuff Jake had seen on his unauthorized visit—black gardening hoses and bags of fertilizer, boxes of insecticide and rat poison, the balls of string, and shovels and pickaxes. They loaded everything in the fourth stall with the bales of straw. When they had finished, shadows had inched up the sides of the mountains to the east, though the tops remained bathed in golden light. Atkins considered his watch but issued no further instructions. Bee Dee, T.J., and Henry stood in a line, holding their small bags, looking like runaways who’d reconsidered their decisions to leave home. After several minutes they all turned their heads to the familiar sound of gears grinding and an engine revving. The yellow bus came around a corner and made its way up the hill, spewing dust. It came to a stop behind the horse trailer. The doors folded back, opening, and T.J. started to step up, then lowered his leg and stepped away. Big Baby stepped down, filling the doorframe, shoulders so wide he had to turn sideways to fit. A white bandage remained wrapped around his head. He looked down at them with a strange sneer then jumped at them, causing all four to fall ba
ck, afraid.

  “Look who’s back,” Atkins said with a big, phony grin. “You all remember Big Baby?” When no one responded Atkins said, “No? Because I’m certain Big Baby remembers all of you, don’t you, Big Baby?”

  “Yes, sir,” Big Baby said, looking them over with his queer smile. “We’re good friends.”

  Jake looked for T-Mac, but the bus was empty and he wondered if T-Mac’s head injury had been more severe. Then again, Big Baby likely had less brains to injure.

  “Well that’s fine,” Atkins said, looking at Jake. “Because when you boys get back I’ve arranged for all of you to spend a lot of time together. Day and night.”

  KNOCK-ME-STIFF RANCH

  GOLD CREEK, CALIFORNIA

  Sloane moved the lantern closer to the documents Alex had found on Trinity Investments. The light spilled over the pages and off the edge of the table but not far. The bunk beds in the corner remained in the shadows, like wooden beds in the bowel of a ship. He continued making notes, connecting threads and trying to find others. Victor Dillon’s security company guarded the Sutter Building, which was owned, at least on paper, by the judge and his wife. Trinity Investments was an offshore investment company Dillon had some connection to, but what kind of investments remained a mystery. Judge Boykin had been instrumental in Dillon’s limited liability company receiving the land grant to build the Fresh Start facility, then sat in judgment on the case brought by the contractor to recover the cost overruns, a tidy sum that just so happened to be the same amount as the loan Boykin took out from Winchester First Street Bank to purchase the Sutter Building. Boykin had also taken out a loan to have that same contractor remodel his home, which did not appear to have ever happened, and he was in a unique position to ensure that regular and long-term-paying occupants filled Fresh Start. The conflicts of interest were rampant, and it was all very interesting, but also all circumstantial. Sloane had tried enough cases to know circumstantial evidence wouldn’t get him far in court and likely wouldn’t frighten anyone, and it did absolutely nothing to get him any closer to rescuing Jake and T.J.