Missing Justice sk-2

by Alafair Burke

  to share on Brigg. In the meantime, I had earned a night off.

  One advantage to being a woman alone should be the occasional luxury of

  coming home and falling straight to sleep. By the time I finished my

  night out with Grace three Nordstrom shopping bags, two martinis, and a

  slice of lemon cheesecake later I was exhausted.

  But I had the usual crap to attend to. My phone was ringing as I

  walked in the door, and Vinnie had left a little message of his own for

  me, right inside his doggie door to make sure I knew it was

  intentional.

  "It's after midnight," I said to my caller, "way past any reasonable

  notion of call cutoffs."

  "It's Graham Szlipkowsky."

  "And how's my favorite defense attorney doing on this very late

  evening?" I held the phone between my ear and shoulder while I began

  scooping, scrubbing, and disinfecting my tile, Vinnie watching

  contentedly from the nearby wicker chair.

  "He's very sorry to be calling you."

  "Not a problem. What's up?"

  "I wanted to make sure you're going to be around tomorrow. We need to

  talk."

  "We are talking."

  "No, I need to show you something. Can you come to my office?"

  I was too tired to try to pry the information out of him. If he was

  going to insist on meeting, better to get it over with. "Fine," I

  said, "but let's make it early. I'll meet you at seven."

  "a.m.? When do you sleep, Kincaid?"

  "Who says I sleep?" I said, hanging up.

  So much for a full Sunday off.

  We met at his office at seven sharp. I noticed that in his khakis and

  navy pullover, he dressed better on the weekend than he did at the

  courthouse.

  "It better be good, Slip."

  "I don't know if it's good, but it's definitely notable."

  My usual Sunday routine of reading the New York Times over dim sum at

  Fong Chong was notable. This had better top it.

  Slip led me into a small library that appeared to double as a

  lunchroom, coffee bar, and chat area. There was a tiny television on

  the countertop. Four men in jellybean colored T-shirts were wiggling

  up a storm with a room full of toddlers.

  "You better have something better for me than a show that transforms

  perfectly cute kids into annoying little freaks."

  "Very funny," he said, hitting a button that turned the screen to an

  even blue. "I think this is big, Samantha."

  "Enough with the dramatics. Just show me why you brought me here."

  He pulled a plastic Gap bag from a nearby chair and set it on the card

  table in the center of the room.

  "My investigator found a safe deposit box at First Coast Bank rented by

  Clarissa Easterbrook. The key was a match."

  "And that's what he found?" I asked, looking at the bag.

  He nodded.

  "And how exactly did your investigator convince the bank to turn over

  the contents of a safe deposit box that didn't belong to him?"

  "Do you really need to know?"

  The truth was, I didn't. If there was any legal violation, it was

  probably only civil. Anyway, courts don't care if evidence is obtained

  illegally, as long as the government's hands were clean.

  He pulled out a manila folder, a videotape, and a computer disc.

  He handed me the folder first. Inside were photocopies of what

  appeared to be a case file for Gunderson Development v. City of

  Portland.

  Slip must have seen a flash of recognition cross my face. "Does that

  mean something to you?"

  "I'm not sure yet," I said, flipping through it. This little joint

  venture definitely fell outside the lines of normal procedure. I

  wasn't about to tell him everything until I figured out for myself how

  the pieces fit together.

  From what I could gather in my quick review, the city had denied

  Gunderson's request for a variance to convert an historically

  significant building into condominiums. Gunderson appealed, arguing

  that the city employee who denied the request had been untrained,

  filling in for the usual specialist who was on maternity leave.

  Gunderson argued that the employee had failed to consider whether his

  redevelopment plan preserved the original architecture to a significant

  degree, which was required to obtain a variance.

  I didn't know squat about administrative law, but Gunderson's appeal

  looked like a major loser. No judge administrative or not wants to be

  in the business of second-guessing the discretionary decisions made by

  front-line bureaucratic implementers.

  But Clarissa had agreed with Gunderson. Result? Gunderson threw some

  plumbing and a few walls into a run-down old church and ended up with

  condominiums that probably sold for four hundred dollars a square

  foot.

  The case sounded familiar. Had I seen it when I reviewed Clarissa's

  files at City Hall? I looked at the dates. Clarissa had ruled in

  favor of Gunderson almost four months ago, and I had only seen the

  cases that were currently pending.

  At the end of the file I found a page of handwritten notes. They were

  dated a week before Clarissa's death and were in the same slanted

  scrawl I'd seen in Clarissa's files.

  Tt/ DC about Gunderson appeal. He advd me city would not reopen. We

  agreed re Grice.

  Something about the file was still tugging at a corner of a memory.

  Each time I thought I was close to plucking out the thought, I'd lose

  hold of it entirely. "What else?"

  He held up the floppy disc. "I've got to give this back to my

  investigator. It's password protected."

  "And the video?"

  "That's the doozie."

  Slip popped the videotape into the built-in VCR beneath the small

  television screen. The blue screen turned to static, then to a shaky

  image of a couple walking out a door.

  It was Clarissa Easterbrook and T. J. Caffrey. Caffrey looked around

  but apparently didn't see whoever was holding the camera. He held

  Clarissa's face and then kissed her. It was long but gentle. I felt

  my eyes shift away instinctively from their private moment, but I

  forced myself to focus.

  Their faces still close, they spoke a few words to each other. Then

  the camera followed as Caffrey walked Clarissa to her car, giving her

  one last kiss before she got in. He hopped into his car, and the two

  drove away. The camera panned outward to show the backdrop, a

  two-story motel with doors that edged the parking lot. A sign at the

  road declared it to be the Village Motor Inn.

  When the screen went to static and then back to blue, I looked at Slip.

  "It's a motel north of Vancouver," he explained, "about thirty miles

  out."

  They'd gone all the way to Washington to avoid being spotted.

  Obviously, they hadn't been careful enough.

  "I guess that confirms the affair," I said. "You think someone was

  blackmailing her? I hate to break it to you, Slip, but it might've

  been Jackson." If sympathy and threatening letters didn't do the

  trick, a videotape like this one might. He had followed Clarissa at

  least once before.

  "If it's blackmail,
" he said, "what do you make of this?" Slip handed

  me a brown padded envelope addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Terrence J.

  Caffrey on a street in Eastmoreland. "The video was inside that

  envelope."

  There was no postmark.

  "Maybe it was hand-delivered, and Caffrey showed it to Clarissa?"

  "Possible. Or maybe Clarissa was going to mail it and never got around

  to it."

  I thought about it. Tara had gotten the impression that Clarissa's

  mystery man was reluctant to live happily ever after with her. Maybe

  Clarissa was playing hardball? I had seen obsession inspire crazier

  actions against a supposed loved one.

  The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn't know everything yet, a

  state of knowledge I was never good at accepting.

  Before I left, I gave Slip the photographs of Gunderson and Minkins

  that Chuck had pulled for me. I kept their PPDS reports for myself.

  Gunderson was sixty-five with a clean record. Minkins was thirty, on

  probation for a forged check.

  My eyes stayed on Minkins's picture. When Chuck gave it to me

  yesterday morning, I hadn't given it a second glance. But now he

  looked familiar. The guy by my table in the library. With shorter

  hair and a closer shave, he could've been Minkins. On the other hand,

  he could've been yet another lanky guy with dark hair and a mustache. I

  might have to arrange an in-person look-see.

  For now, I wanted to know what Jackson could tell me. "Have your guy

  take a look at these. See if he recognizes them from the site."

  Slip glanced at the photographs. "Are you going to tell me who they

  are?"

  "Nope."

  When I left Slip's office, I called my father to make sure he was home.

  I wasn't sure I could make it over for dinner, I told him, but I needed

  to talk to him now, if he didn't mind.

  Five minutes later, he was pouring me a glass of iced tea as we sat

  together at the breakfast nook. We both had finally adjusted to the

  clean tabletop. When my mother was still living,

  this was the place where she stacked her books, mail, and bills. Now

  that my father was in charge of running the house, those things piled

  up in the den.

  "Look what I found." I handed him a copy of the newspaper article,

  showing him in the background at the college commencement. "You look

  very handsome."

  Something dark crossed my father's face. "Where'd you find that old

  thing?"

  "I came across it when I was going through some old newspaper articles

  at the library trying to tie up some loose ends."

  "Well, thanks, Sammy. I'll hold on to it. I forgot what I looked like

  back then. Not too shabby in my day, was I?"

  "I think it's safe to say you were a full-blown hot tie Dad. I was

  actually hoping to talk to you about it. Were you doing security for

  the commencement?"

  Dad shook his head. "I was driving one of the bigwigs. We did a lot

  of that in OSP."

  "Who were you driving?"

  "Oh, who can even remember? That was so long ago. What's this about,

  honI'm not sure yet. A couple of names keep coming up on something I'm

  looking into, and one of them is Clifford Brigg. What do you remember

  about him?"

  Dad put the article face down on the table. "Not a lot. I left OSP

  when you were just a little kid, and I never looked back. I remember

  reading that Brigg died oh, that must have been more than fifteen years

  ago."

  "But what was he like back then? What was his reputation?"

  "I'm sorry, Samantha, but I told you before, I don't want to talk about

  this. What's past is past."

  No, he told me he didn't want to talk about his reasons for leaving

  OSP. The knot I'd felt when I first found the article began to settle

  its way back into my stomach. "Dad, does this have something to do

  with why you moved over to the forest service? Because that's what you

  told me before that you didn't want to talk about."

  He was silent for a moment, as if he were mulling something over in his

  head before speaking. "I didn't say anything other than I don't want

  to talk about it. End of discussion."

  End of discussion? I hadn't heard him say that since I was in junior

  high school and he forbade me from taking the Greyhound with Grace for

  a Duran Duran concert in Seattle. Grace's mother had nixed the idea

  too, so we caved.

  This time I wouldn't quit so easily. "Dad, I hope you know there's

  nothing you can't tell me. Obviously this picture is upsetting to you,

  and it's got something to do with our conversation the other day about

  Mom "

  "It's got nothing to do with your mother."

  "OK, whatever, but something about this upsets you. I wish you'd talk

  to me about it." I couldn't believe I even had to say that to him. As

  long as I could remember, his favorite pastime was to tell me things.

  Anything. When I was a kid, it took all he could handle not to divulge

  where Mom had hidden the Christmas presents.

  Now he wouldn't talk to me about a legislator who had died when I was

  in high school.

  "Dad, I came across these articles doing research on the East-erbrook

  investigation. If you know something, you have to tell me. It could

  be important. Melvin Jackson might be innocent."

  "If anyone's innocent, it's you, and you're the one I'm worried about.

  It's these people, Sam. These people. They'll eat you alive to

  advance their agenda."

  "What people? Dad, don't leave me in the dark."

  He stood up, walked to the kitchen sink, and stared out the window for

  a minute, and then another, without saying a word to me. Then he sat

  across from me again.

  "I did security for Clifford Brigg. The man was well, he was a son of

  a bitch. Pardon my language. He's dead and gone, but if anyone

  associated with him is injecting himself into your investigation

  please, Sam, just walk away."

  "Why, Dad? The least you can do is tell me why."

  "I can't, Sam. I just can't."

  "And I just can't walk away."

  I left my father with whatever secrets he was holding on to and drove

  to my office, feeling incredibly lonely. Part of me wanted to lie on

  my couch, watch TV, and cry, but I knew I needed to work.

  I made a list of everything I knew about Clarissa, Gunderson, the

  Glenville property, Caffrey, Townsend, and Jackson. Then I used lines

  to connect facts that might be related, like Clarissa's ruling on the

  Gunderson case, Gunderson's stake in the urban growth boundary, and

  Clarissa's affair with Cafferty.

  Before I knew it, my legal pad was so filled with overlapping lines

  that I couldn't read anything. Frustrated, I finally circled my pen

  around the entire list over and over again until I popped a hole in the

  paper. What the hell were you up to, Clarissa?

  Making sense of everything I'd learned over the weekend was going to

  take some legwork. I paged Johnson.

  I tried to keep it simple, telling him about Clarissa's safe deposit

  box. "I was hoping you'd have another go at Caffrey since you never

  got in t
ouch with him the first time. We need to find out what

  Clarissa was doing with that videotape."

  Johnson obviously didn't share my enthusiasm. "Sorry, Sam, but I'm

  working other cases now. I can't pull off to put in more time on

  Jackson."

  "Do you know if Walker can do it? I've got the rest of the prelim

  tomorrow." I had a hard time hiding my frustration. The

  Major Crimes Team owed its existence to the District Attorney's

  insistence on sufficient investigative support for cases carrying

  mandatory minimum sentences.

  "That's going to be a problem too. Look, since it's you, I'll give it

  to you straight. When we saw the lieutenant this morning, he told us

  that any overtime on Jackson needed to go through him."

  "Did he say why?" The bureau could be stingy on overtime, but I'd

  never heard of an order to run each minute through the supervisor.

  "I got the impression someone had put some extra time into the case

  after it was cleared. But I know it wasn't me, and it also wasn't

  Jack. You know anything about that?"

  "Chuck went with me to pick up the key from Clarissa's assistant, but