Cold Judgment

by Joanne Fluke

  He had ordered the tree this morning, the first Christmas tree he’d put up since he was a boy. It was the foolish whim of a dying man. He had pictured himself sitting in front of a huge tree blazing with lights, sipping a hot toddy while snow fell silently outside the window. There would be Christmas carols playing softly in the background and a cheerful fire in the grate. Obviously he had read too much Dickens.

  He supposed the tree looked festive enough. The branches were symmetrical and every ornament hung in perfect balance. The boy had done a fine job of trimming, but Dr. Elias experienced none of the nostalgia he’d expected. The tree was merely a decoration, a dead one at that. Soon the needles would begin to fall and it would be relegated to the trash bin.

  Dr. Elias took a deep breath of the pine-scented air. It reminded him of the cleaning compound the crew used on the kitchen floor. The Christmas tree had been a mistake.

  The delivery boy had rigged a switch by his chair and Dr. Elias turned off the colored lights. He had wasted the whole morning on foolishness. Now there were important things to do.

  The moment he sat down behind his desk, Dr. Elias felt better. A stack of reports had come in the morning mail. He knew the material they contained would be distressing, but it was his duty to read them. His father had often said that duty was the basis of all morality. Dr. Elias prided himself on being a moral man.

  The first report was as he’d expected. Nora was still playing games with her therapist. Dr. Elias nodded as he read through the closely typed pages. There was nothing he needed to do at this stage. Nora’s problem had not yet become critical.

  Mac’s therapist reported he was adjusting quite nicely. At least there were no obvious problems. Mac’s case could safely wait. He would maintain on his own for a while.

  Debra appeared relaxed and happy. Her therapist was confident she was making progress. Dr. Elias shook his head sadly as he read the glowing report. Debra’s therapist had a lot to learn. The report glossed over the fact that Debra’s illness was cyclical. There was always a period of euphoria preceding the onset of depression. Debra might be on an upward swing, but she would spiral inevitably downward into melancholia. Her happiness was nothing but a warning signal of the depression to come.

  Kay had canceled her Wednesday appointment, but she had booked another for Friday afternoon. Dr. Elias knew that, as the mayor’s wife, Kay was very busy over the holiday season, but her therapy should take top priority. He circled the new date in red on his calendar. He would check to make sure Kay kept her appointment tomorrow.

  There was no report for Father Marx. Dr. Elias paged through the sheets of paper again, but it was clear the priest had not kept his Wednesday appointment.

  There was more than a warning here. Dr. Elias straightened in his chair and his hands shook slightly as he gripped the sheaf of papers. This was a crisis situation. Father Marx was much too conscientious to forget an appointment and he had failed to cancel or reschedule. Father Marx was in trouble and he was deliberately avoiding his new analyst. Dr. Elias knew he had to intervene before it was too late.

  CHAPTER 15

  Debra sat on the floor in Mac’s living room with the big box of Christmas decorations in front of her. It felt odd to be there, instead of at the paper. Her boss said it was a Christmas present, two days off in a row. She didn’t have an assignment until Saturday afternoon.

  The box was dusty and she brushed it off. Her father’s spidery handwriting was on the label: Xmas Decos. How long ago had he written it? Both her parents were gone now. Her mother had died eight years ago and her father had followed within a year. These decorations hadn’t been used since they’d moved from the family house in Mankato. That meant it had been at least ten years since this box had been opened.

  The masking tape was starting to peel and it came off easily when Debra pulled on it. The ornaments were packed in layers of excelsior, each one wrapped in its own square of soft cloth. Tears came to Debra’s eyes as she recognized the white flannel patterned with tiny blue flowers. It had been one of her mother’s favorite nightgowns. The worn yellow cotton with frolicking lambs had once been a sheet for her own crib.

  Debra smiled as she unwrapped the delicate blown-glass baskets of strawberries. They had belonged to her grandmother. The porcelain elves were next, all eleven, including the one she had broken as a child. Her mother had mended it with Duco cement. Debra still remembered holding the little head with its peaked cap and asking her mother to make it all better. She had been very young then and she had still believed in the magic of grown-ups. Later that year she had encountered a dose of reality when her mother hadn’t been able to fix a broken balloon.

  There were the walnut shells they had glued together and painted gold. Colored pinecones were in another box, each wrapped individually in tissue paper. They had gone out in the fall to gather them, picking out the perfect ones from a bed of fragrant pine needles in the park. They’d had enough to fill five Red Owl grocery sacks, and when Christmas came, they’d dipped them in tempera paint and decorated the tree.

  There were more treasures in the second layer of the box. Her parents had saved the star she’d made out of cellophane soda straws. And the red and green paper chain linked together in circles with untidy dabs of school paste. The paste still smelled faintly of peppermint. Debra knew from experience that it didn’t taste that way.

  She had been in the first grade that Christmas. She’d memorized all three verses of “Up on the Housetop” and gone caroling with the rest of her class. On Christmas Eve she’d played the Virgin Mary in the Lutheran Sunday school pageant. Her favorite doll had stood in for Baby Jesus. She had rehearsed for weeks, saying her line over and over, to anyone who would listen. And she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. Her parents had been so proud when she’d done it perfectly.

  There was a package in the bottom of the box. The tag on the outside was in her mother’s perfect Palmer penmanship: For Debra’s Little One at Christmas.

  Debra’s hands shook as she tore off the faded Christmas wrapping. There was a baby doll inside. A card was pinned to the blanket. This was your mother’s first doll. We saved it for you.

  Her baby would never see this doll. Debra picked it up and cradled it in her arms. She didn’t realize she was crying until she saw the wet splashes of her tears on the dusty lid of the box. Her mother and father had packed her childhood away for her, sealing and saving all the warm memories of her past for a grandchild they would never see. And now that grandchild was dead. Steve was dead. Her baby was dead. What had ever made her think she had the courage to start all over again?

  Mac pulled the mail out of his box. It was late, as usual. The desk sergeant usually recruited a rookie to handle it. That meant it was always screwed up. It was after three in the afternoon and Reinert’s rookie had just finished the distribution.

  There was a flyer for a basketball game: The Cops vs. the Rubbers. Firestone was sponsoring a charity game for muscular dystrophy. Any officer who wanted to play was urged to sign up.

  The Policemen’s Relief Fund was asking for donations again. They did a good job. Mac slipped some bills in an envelope and sealed it. He’d drop it off at the desk later.

  A special equipment catalog was stuffed in the box. Mac paged through it even though he’d never gone in for sap gloves and weighted batons. The department frowned on special equipment, but some officers claimed a cop needed every advantage he could get.

  Feet hurt? Try our special arch support shoes. Made with the man on his feet in mind. Mac chuckled as he read the brochure. A hundred and fifty bucks for a pair of shoes. And they probably weren’t any better than department regulation.

  A pink notice was tucked in the back of his box. Mac wondered how long it had been there. It was his yearly notification. He had to qualify on the shooting range by the first of the year.

  Mac sighed and glanced at
his watch. Fritz Gunderson was on duty until five. If he went right down to the range, he could get by again this year.

  The MPD range was one of the finest in the country. The winter months made it impossible to use a walk-through combat range, and the old swivel-target type was outdated. Now Minneapolis had an expensive video projector setup. Scores were recorded electronically from the grids in the screen. It even measured velocity. The whole thing reminded Mac of a sophisticated computer game.

  The illusion of reality was frightening. It felt just like being out on the street, encountering targets at random. Old ladies with shopping bags got in the way when you tried to take out the man with the shotgun. There were dark shadows in a deserted alley, two dogs knocking trash cans over, and a killer with a gun pointed at your head. A man leaning out a window blocked your aim when a robber took a shot at your fellow officer. There was even one point where your own partner got in the way as a murderer faced you with a revolver. Your shots were counted and cataloged by computer and points were subtracted when you hit a civilian. Mac had shot on the range only once and logged a perfect score. For the past four years he hadn’t been able to shoot at all.

  Mac signed out for the range and got his coat out of his locker. He backed the car out of the lot and sighed impatiently as he waited at the light. The Christmas traffic was heavy. It would be worse when he came back. Then he’d hit the five o’clock exodus from the downtown offices.

  He gripped the steering wheel tightly as he drove to the range. Perhaps it would be different this time. He wasn’t as nervous as he’d been last year.

  “Hey, Mac! It’s good to see you!”

  There was a big smile on Fritz’s round face. He was putting on weight and his uniform stretched tightly over his stomach. He’d always been heavy, but now that he was off the street, his wife’s cooking was catching up with him.

  When Mac had first met Barbara Gunderson, she’d been working her way through the Time-Life Foods of the World series. She had just started The Cooking of Germany. Mac’s mouth watered as he remembered the wooden table in Fritz’s kitchen loaded with potato pancakes, sauerbraten, roast duck with stuffing, red cabbage with apples, Black Forest cake, and five different kinds of strudel. Fritz had brought Mac home for dinner at least twice a week when they were partners. Mac wondered which volume Barbara was working on now.

  “Set it up for me, Fritz.” Mac ejected his service rounds and loaded his revolver with wad cutters.

  “You don’t need to, Mac. There’s nobody here. I can just sign you off again.”

  “I’ve got to try it, Fritz.” Mac shook his head. “Maybe I can make it on my own this year.”

  Fritz patted his shoulder and went into the control booth. Mac took his place in front of the screen. He tried to breathe deeply and fight down his nervousness. It was only a target range. This wasn’t real.

  Mac’s hands started to sweat as he waited for the targets. The scene was a city street at night. He could see a man lurking in a doorway as he approached. The man stepped out. There was something in his hands. An umbrella. Mac held his fire.

  Another figure appeared on his left. It was a big man with a shotgun pointed directly at him. Mac tried to squeeze off a shot. It was no use. He couldn’t do it.

  A third target appeared, a woman with a revolver. She cocked it and aimed at Mac. She was so close, Mac could see down the barrel of her gun. He tried to shoot, but his finger was frozen on the trigger.

  It was impossible. Mac let a teenager with a shotgun and a burglar with a handgun get away. It was no different from last year. He still couldn’t pull the trigger.

  “Damn! I can’t do it, Fritz.” Mac’s voice was shaking.

  The screen went blank and Fritz came out of the booth. “Hey, it’s all right.” He draped a friendly arm around Mac’s shoulders. “You could do it if it was real. I’ll bet on it.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Mac took the form that Fritz had signed and put it in his pocket. His hands were still shaking.

  “Come on in the booth and have a cup of coffee with me. If I don’t tell somebody about the captain, I’ll bust.”

  “His gun was dirty again this year?” Mac managed a grin.

  “Of course it was dirty. There’s no reason why he should change the habits of a lifetime.” Fritz laughed as he poured coffee for Mac. “And Schuman and Tomczik are just as bad. The only time their guns get cleaned is when I do it down here. Schuman’s was green inside. I swear to God, Mac.”

  “What did the captain do?” Mac got ready for a good one. Captain Meyers was notoriously bad on the range.

  “He took a stance like one of those western gunfighters. I should’a had the sound track from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. And his score was even worse than last year. He missed every target but one and shot four civilians through the head. How’s that for setting an example for the rest of the force?”

  “Jesus! I’m glad he never has to use his weapon.” Mac chuckled. “So what did you do, Fritz?”

  “I told him he qualified. What else could I do? He’s my boss!”

  “You were wonderful, Nora!” Elena hugged her tightly as she came into the dressing room. “Tomorrow night’s going to be fantastic!”

  “Tomorrow night’s going to be a disaster!” Nora slapped a glob of cold cream on her face and rubbed it in.

  “Nora, be reasonable.” Elena handed her a box of tissues. “Remember what you tell your students. If the dress rehearsal goes off without a hitch, you’ve got legitimate cause for worry.”

  “This one’s the exception!” Nora snatched a tissue and wiped off her makeup with angry strokes. “I’ll kill Harry if he doesn’t get the light cues right. That baby spot was all over the place!”

  Elena moved to stand behind Nora’s chair. She started to rub Nora’s tense shoulders with strong, even strokes. “Just relax now. You’re all upset over nothing. Would you like a little glass of sherry?”

  “I’d like a gallon of vodka!”

  Suddenly Nora started to grin. Elena was the soul of patience. And she was right. Everything always worked out perfectly on opening night.

  “I’m fine now, darling.” Nora reached back to squeeze Elena’s hand. “It’s just an attack of nerves, that’s all. Why don’t you run to the office and see if the playbills are ready? I promise to be in a better mood by the time you come back.”

  After Elena left, Nora stared at her reflection in the harsh lights of the dressing table. Without the makeup, she looked dreadful. Age lines crinkled the skin at the corners of her eyes and the creases were deep around her mouth. Age was supposed to give a face character, and Nora thought she’d like a little less. Laugh lines were not laughable when they happened to be hers.

  She slipped out of her costume and tossed it over a chair. Then she faced the mirror again. Her upper arms were still firm and her legs were good. Her breasts didn’t droop because they were small to begin with. The centerfold cuties in Playboy would look like cows when they were her age.

  Her hair was nice, no gray at all. There had been a few gray strands, but she was ruthless about pulling them out. Nora Stanford, at her publicized age of thirty-six, could not be seen with gray in her hair.

  “Not bad for an old broad.” Nora stuck out her tongue at the mirror. It was a childish act of defiance. Inwardly she was terrified. She was aging with every breath she took and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Someday she’d look in the mirror and face her nightmare. She would be old. What would Elena do then? Would she leave to find a younger lover?

  “You’re so beautiful, Nora!”

  Nora jumped as Elena’s image appeared in the mirror behind her. She hadn’t heard her come in. She watched Elena’s hands reach out to caress her gently.

  “I locked the door, Nora.” Elena’s voice was soft in her ear.

  Nora turned to kiss her gratefully. Elena was wonderful. Suddenly she felt young and sexy and not over the hill at all.

  Confession was over for
the night. Father Marx checked the poor box on his way to the altar. It held five dollars less than it had this morning. Another negative donation.

  Father Marx did his best to be charitable. Someone must have needed the money very badly to steal from the church. Perhaps it had been a man with hungry children to feed, or a renter who needed five dollars to avoid eviction. Charitable thinking was so difficult to maintain at St. Steven’s. More likely it was a teenager needing a fix.

  His back hurt as he bent over to shut off the Christmas tree lights. It always hurt after a two-hour stint in the confessional. When he’d been young he’d believed that discomfort was good for the soul. He had disapproved of the old priests who’d had cushions installed on the hard wooden bench in the priest’s cubicle. Now Father Marx’s convictions had weakened along with his back. He would bring a pillow with him tomorrow night.

  Father Marx frowned as an old man entered the church and walked toward the confessional. Technically confession was over. The man had not seen him. Father Marx knew he could escape to the parish house and the comfortable recliner that was waiting for him, but something in the old man’s halting steps aroused his sympathy. He was here to serve his parishioners. Hearing the old man’s confession wouldn’t take that long and it would be a change of pace. Most of the evening’s penitents had been teenagers with impure thoughts to confess. Father Marx was afraid he’d scream if he heard that phrase one more time tonight. Thank God this man was too old for that!

  This was probably a Christmas nostalgia confession, an old man seeking penance for a long-forgotten venial sin. Father Marx hurried to the priest’s cubicle and pushed back the curtain. He kissed his stole and took his place on the bench. It was still warm from the heat of his body. This couldn’t be more than five Hail Marys and Our Fathers, and a good Act of Contrition. One more absolution and he could quit for the night.