Nursery Crimes

by Ayelet Waldman

  “I won’t. I don’t. What is it?”

  “The cops are, like, all over my house and they won’t tell me why, but I think I know.”

  “You do?” Did she? Could she know about her stepfather?

  “Yeah. It’s Daniel. I know it is. He killed my mom. I’m so completely sure he did it.” She wasn’t crying anymore. She seemed grim, and certain, and scared.

  “Your stepfather? Are you just guessing, or do you have proof?”

  “Well, it’s not like he’s confessed or anything. It’s just that he hates me and my mom. He left once, you know. He was having an affair, and my mom threw him out.”

  I decided that it was better to play dumb. “An affair? Really? With whom, do you know?”

  “I don’t know her name or anything. But I know that he met her online, how lame is that? He’s like some pathetic old man having cybersex. It’s so totally gross.” Audrey no longer sounded upset. Just really angry.

  “How did you find out about this?” I asked.

  “My mom made him go to therapy and the two of them dragged me with them a couple of times. So we could ‘deal with our family issues.’” Her voice dripped sarcasm. “They were supposed to be talking about me, but my mom ended up screaming about his computer slut. The shrink made her shut up, but I heard enough to figure out what the creep was up to.”

  “Creep is right,” I agreed. “Audrey, I think you should be telling this to the police. Don’t you?”

  “No! No way. He’ll kill me if he finds out I told on him.” She started to cry again.

  It occurred to me that she might be right. Kill her, as in really kill her, not just be angry enough to ground her for the weekend.

  “Okay. Okay. Do you want me to tell the police, and leave you out of it?”

  “Would you? Would you do that?”

  “Of course, honey. Of course I will. But what are you going to do? You can’t go home, can you?” I reached my arm around her and hugged her. I tried to imagine Peter’s face when I told him that I’d invited Abigail Hathaway’s daughter to stay with us until I could prove that her stepfather was a murderer. I opened my mouth to invite her to stay, but she spoke first.

  “I can stay at my friend Alice’s. I was going to do that anyway, at least until my aunt comes back. My aunt was here for a couple of days, but then she had to go home. She’s coming back soon, that’s what she said. She wants me to go live with her in New Jersey, but I don’t know if I want to. I mean, who the hell wants to live in New Jersey?”

  “I’m from New Jersey,” I said, smiling and trying to cut the tension a bit.

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s not so bad, New Jersey. But what about school? Don’t you want to stay in your school?”

  “To hell with school. I’m flunking out anyway. Who cares?”

  I didn’t want to touch that. The weeks following her mother’s death were not the time to lecture Audrey on the importance of an education.

  “Okay, you go to your friend Alice’s and I’ll call the police and tell them what you told me.”

  “But don’t mention my name, okay? Tell them you heard about it from, like, anonymous sources or something.”

  “I’ll tell them something.”

  I packed a Baggie with some cookies for Audrey. She swore to me that she was going right over to Alice’s house, and left the number for me. Then I called Detective Carswell’s office and left an urgent message for him to call me.

  Checking my watch, I realized that I had a few more minutes before Ruby and Peter were likely to get home. I contemplated getting back onto the computer, but decided that I needed help if I was going to get any more information on Mooney. I decided to call in yet another favor. I dialed the federal defender’s office and asked to speak to Al Hockey.

  “Hey, it’s the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe! Have you figured out what to do with all your children?”

  “Ha. Funny, Al. Two. Exactly two children. One and a half, really. Less than you, I might add.”

  “Is it just two? All those months spent barefoot and pregnant for two kids?”

  “Al, this line of discussion is getting old. Really old.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Juliet. I’ll stop when you get yourself out of the kitchen and back here, where you belong.”

  “Thanks. And I miss you, too.”

  I could almost hear him blushing on the other end of the line. “Enough of this mushy stuff. Why are you calling? Who do you need me to run through NCIC now?”

  “I’m trying to get some information about someone who does a lot of messing around on the Internet. I found out a bunch of stuff, but I’m no hacker, and I’ve kind of hit a brick wall. I was hoping you’d have some ideas for me.”

  Al paused, and it seemed to me that there was an uncomfortable silence.

  “Al? You there? Got any ideas?”

  “Yeah, I’m here. Okay, Juliet, can I trust you?”

  “Sure. Of course you can trust me. You know that.”

  “I do have someone I’ve gone to a number of times for—let’s call it specialized information. But if the boss lady found out I was using this guy, she’d hang me by my nuts.”

  “Nice image, Al. You’ve piqued my interest. Who’s your expert?”

  “I’m swearing you to secrecy, Juliet.”

  “I’m sworn, Al.”

  “Okay, remember Julio Rodriguez?”

  A year or so before I’d quit, the office had represented Julio Rodriguez, a skinny kid from East L.A. who happened to be a computer genius. Using his cousin’s ten-year-old Mac and an old acoustic modem, Julio managed to hack into the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s files. It was months before anybody noticed that the number of green cards being issued to immigrants in Boyle Heights had shot through the roof. The papers had dubbed Julio the “Robin Hood of the Bario,” and by the time the feds had tracked him down, he’d become a local folk hero. Marla Goldfarb herself had represented him and lost. Last I heard, Julio was serving a four-year sentence at FCI Lompoc.

  “No kidding! Julio is out of jail? Is he some kind of expert witness or something?”

  “No and yes,” Al said.

  “No and yes? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Yes, he’s doing some, er, consulting, and no, he’s not out of jail.”

  “Let me get this straight. Julio is still in jail?”

  “At the Farm at Lompoc.” The Farm is the minimum-security facility at Lompoc Federal Correction Institution. It’s where white-collar criminals such as Michael Milkin and, apparently, Julio Rodriguez, serve their time.

  “And you’re using him as a consultant?”

  “It’s really not a big deal, Juliet. Sometimes, if I happen to have a question or two about a specific computer issue, and if I happen to be heading up to Lompoc anyway, I stop in to have a little conversation with Julio. And sometimes I give his mother a few bucks.”

  “How few?”

  “A hundred dollars for every hour I spend with Julio.”

  I whistled. “Wow. Where the heck do you get that kind of money? You work for the federal defender, not for Johnny Cochran.”

  “I expense it. Over a couple of weeks. You see why Marla would lose her mind if she found out? I can’t exactly submit this on a reimbursement form to the court, can I?”

  All expert fees paid out by the federal defender’s office have to be filed for approval with the federal district court. Marla, as a court officer, has the right to approve them herself, but ultimately the chief judge gets the paperwork. Al was right. There was no way Marla would ever approve payments to Julio Rodriguez, a former client, even if he was the smartest cybergeek in all of California.

  “So, Al, if I needed to have a chat with Julio, what would I do?”

  “Are you still a member of the bar?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Then you would head up to Lompoc for a legal visit. If you tell Julio you used to work for us, he might
not make you pay his mother in advance.”

  I considered for a moment whether I really wanted to be stuck behind the wheel of my car for the three hours it takes to get to Lompoc. Then I thought of Audrey.

  “Thanks, Al. I’m going tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow? Want some company?”

  “What? You can go with me to Lompoc tomorrow? Are you serious?”

  “I’m investigating a habeas case and I haven’t been up to interview the client. He’s at Lompoc.”

  “Al, I love you. I really do.”

  “We’ve got to get an early start. I’ll pick you up at six.”

  “Jesus. That is early.”

  “You want to go or not?”

  “Yes, yes. I want to go. Do you have my address?”

  “Orange Drive, in Hancock Park, right?”

  “Indeed.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Al.”

  “Thanks for what? We’re just carpooling to Lompoc, right?”

  “Right.”

  PETER wasn’t thrilled when I told him he’d have to take the night off so I could wake up at the crack of dawn and head up to Lompoc, but he didn’t freak out, either. He seemed sort of resigned to my investigation by that point.

  The next morning I hauled myself out of bed before it was light and allowed myself a rare extra-large cup of coffee. One caffeine drink wouldn’t kill the baby. Neither would two. Three was pushing it, but it was five-thirty in the morning, for crying out loud. I was waiting out on my front steps when Al pulled up in his monstrous Suburban.

  “Nice to see you’re taking that dependence on foreign oil thing to heart,” I said as I scrambled up into the passenger seat, which seemed, to me at least, to be about eight feet off the ground.

  “The United States has plenty of oil. We aren’t dependent on anybody. That’s all just lies spread by the government so we wouldn’t figure out their real agenda in the Gulf War.”

  “And that was?”

  “Illegally testing biological weapons on U.S. troops.”

  There was no way I was going to spend the next eight hours exploring the depths of Al’s paranoid conspiracy theories.

  “You’re right, Al. Absolutely right. How could I have been so stupid? Can we change the subject now?”

  “Fine. Live in ignorance. I don’t care. Coffee?” He leaned over and picked up a thermos that was tucked under his seat.

  “Mmm. Real coffee. I shouldn’t. I had a cup or two this morning.”

  “Why shouldn’t you?”

  “Oh, you know, the baby and all.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Elaine drank two pots of coffee a day when she was pregnant with our kids. And let’s not even talk about the drinking and smoking.”

  “I know, I know. And you never put them in car seats, either, right?” I noticed, then, that Al had devised an intricate system of tucking his seat belt over his body and through his arm so that it appeared that he was wearing it while, in actuality, it hung, unbuckled and useless, at his side.

  “Right,” he said.

  “Give me the thermos.” I grabbed it, opened the top, and poured a few steaming inches into the little orange cup. Sipping the coffee, I grimaced at the weak, sour flavor. Obviously not a gourmet blend. But caffeine is caffeine, in whatever form it comes. I guzzled the last few mouthfuls in the cup and handed the thermos back to Al.

  “Thanks,” I said, and meant it.

  We passed the rest of the drive in silence, listening to Al’s favorite talk-radio host denounce the United Nations as a tool of the New World Order and claim to have personally witnessed black helicopters in formation over Roswell, New Mexico.

  We pulled into Lompoc and headed over to the visiting building. We stopped at the reception desk, handed over our identification, and each filled out the form indicating that we were there for a legal visit. I glanced over at Al’s form and noticed that he’d only written Julio’s name.

  “What about your habeas case, Al?” I asked.

  “That? I decided not to bother with it today. I’ve got plenty of time before the petition is due.”

  “So you’re just here for me?”

  “Yup.”

  I smiled at him. What a guy.

  We passed through the metal detectors, surrendering our cell phones to the guards, to be held until we left. I had a brief moment of panic, imagining something terrible happening to Ruby, and Peter unsuccessfully trying to reach me on my phone, but I pushed it out of my mind. Parents had survived thousands of years without cell phones. I could live without mine for a couple of hours.

  Al and I walked up to the first door to the visiting room and stood, holding our passes up to the window and waiting, more or less patiently, for the guard manning the door to notice us. Despite the fact that I caught her eye through the reinforced window more than once, it took at least five minutes for the guard to buzz us in. By the time she had deigned to move her hand the two inches it took to reach the buzzer, I had begun, as always, to fume.

  Prison guards can sometimes be the worst of the worst: petty, bureaucratic, wannabe cops who get off on asserting whatever power they can muster. Who in their right mind would want to spend his or her entire working day lording it over a bunch of pathetic, sometimes violent, losers whose fondest wish is usually to see you, if not dead, then beaten to a pulp? You have to really like the power dynamic to be willing to put up with the misery.

  I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve been treated with any kind of respect by a prison guard. They tend to view defense lawyers as one rung below their clients on the social scale. There’s not a lot you can do about it, however. You just have to grit your teeth and do your best to ignore their games. So Al and I stood and waited for the rotund little guard in the too-tight uniform to buzz us through the steel-and-glass door. Then we walked through the hall and waited at the next locked door to get into the visiting room. It took us almost fifteen minutes to walk about twenty feet.

  We made ourselves comfortable at one of the tables reserved for legal visits and waited some more, this time for Julio to be brought down to the visiting room. Visiting a client involves a whole lot of waiting. Just when I feared I was going to have to go out, visit the bathroom, and repeat the whole entrance rigamarole again, Julio was brought through a barred door into the room. One of the guards pointed him in our direction and he ambled over.

  Julio was a good-looking kid, small and dark with decidedly Indian features. He wore his hair long and parted at the side like a curtain falling over his right eye. His face was broad and angled, with sharp cheekbones and a nose that was almost hooked. He looked like a Mayan statue—regal and just a little scary. He wore a pair of pressed jeans with a knife edge of a crease running precisely down the middle of his legs, a blue button-down shirt, and perfectly white Nikes—his prison uniform, but with a touch of class. He sat down gracefully and reached a small, strong hand with well-kept nails across the table.

  “Al,” he said, shaking his hand.

  “Julio. Good to see you,” Al replied.

  “Ma’am.” He extended a hand to me.

  “Juliet Applebaum,” I said, surprised at the softness of his palm, especially when contrasted with the firmness of his grasp.

  “What can I do for you today?” Julio asked. In his voice I could hear the faintest trace of a Mexican accent.

  “I was hoping you might be able to help me with a case I’ve been investigating,” I said.

  Al looked at me, eyebrows raised. I guess I’d never put it so bluntly before. The truth was unavoidable, however. I was investigating the murder of Abigail Hathaway, albeit unofficially.

  “Has Al explained my terms to you?” Julio asked softly.

  “One hundred dollars per hour, to be paid to your mother.”

  “Yes. I usually require some proof of prepayment, but if Al can vouch for you, I will allow you to pay after we speak.”

  “I can vouch for her,” Al said
.

  “Fine,” Julio replied.

  “Okay, so here’s the situation,” I began.

  It took about fifteen minutes for me to explain the entire history of Abigail Hathaway’s death, her husband’s affair, and the polyamorous computer club to Julio. He listened intently, never taking his eyes off mine. Initially it was disconcerting to have him staring at me so tenaciously, but I got used to it. I had never met anyone who sat as still and as quietly as Julio. Every once in a while he would nod at something I had said, or raise a quizzical eyebrow, asking, without words, for more information. Other than that, he was made of stone. Finally, when I had finished, he spoke.

  “You should not have come here.”

  “What?” I was confused and not a little irritated. I mean, I’d driven three hours when I could barely manage to sit in one place for more than five minutes without my back seizing up, and this little creep was telling me I shouldn’t have come? Wasn’t my money good enough for him?

  “You have wasted your time and money.”

  “And why would that be?” My voice came out stiffer and a little more prim than I would have liked.

  “Because a computer-literate eight-year-old could have solved this problem for you.”

  “Well, Julio, here’s the thing: I don’t happen to know any computer-literate eight-year-olds, and my two-and-a-half-year-old can barely manage to surf the Barbie website. So you’re what I’ve got. Are you going to help me or not?”

  “Yes. I will. But it is important for you to understand that this problem of yours is very easily solved.”

  “I understand.”

  “I am capable of much more demanding tasks.”

  “I understand.”

  “Despite that, you understand, my fee must apply.”

  “I understand.”

  “This is what you must do.” Julio then described to me how I could access Daniel Mooney’s account and trace his virtual steps. I have no idea if what he taught me was legal, but I decided not to worry about it. I took careful notes on Julio’s instructions, not trusting my pregnancy-addled brain to remember anything. After he had finished, he asked for a sheet of paper and carefully wrote out a bill for one hour’s work.