Dominic

by Mark Pryor

  “What happened?” I asked eventually.

  “The police found him in an abandoned house. Looks like he did it himself.”

  Through the fog of shock that I was trying to see through, that suggestion genuinely surprised me. “Himself? No, that doesn’t sound like Bobby.”

  “I know.”

  “He was too cocky.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you . . . people like you and him. Do you even commit suicide?”

  “Mostly no,” he said. “But mostly we don’t find ourselves in his situation.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He killed a cop. He wouldn’t feel bad about that, but he wouldn’t react well to realizing he was going to be caught. To going to prison for the rest of his life.”

  “Is that what would’ve happened?” I didn’t even know. “Can juveniles get life sentences?”

  “We . . . the DA’s office probably would’ve tried him as an adult. So, yes. And even if he got forty years, thirty years, that’s a lifetime to a kid. I wasn’t inside his head, but to begin with we don’t value life the way everyone else does. Other people’s, as you know, but even our own. A life in prison . . . I can see under those circumstances it making sense, yeah.”

  I tried not to think of little Bobby, the kid who could act sweet and kind and generous. I knew that even those moments never meant he loved me; but they did show that for a little while he wanted me to be happy. For whatever reason. I held back the tears and tried to explain why, in my heart of hearts, I knew this day would come. Or something like it.

  “You know, Dom. The one thing I never wanted was to have to visit him in prison. That was always my biggest dread, seeing him get locked up. Watching the days, weeks, years go by. Watching him grow up there, and then get older and older in a jumpsuit. I don’t think I could bear that.”

  He didn’t say anything, and I knew he had no idea what to say. We didn’t talk like this normally, emotionally, and I could almost hear his mind working overtime to come up with the right thing to say. The thing about Dominic, he’s either scheming or blurting. Really, it’s one or the other with him. He’ll do both sometimes, because he knows it’s also a way to mess with people. And that, I’m convinced, is his primary mission in life: to mess with people. To get them to do things for him, or just do things because he makes them. It’s pretty remarkable, really, and I often wonder what would happen if he turned those abilities toward something useful, something good. That man could probably solve world hunger if he looked at it the right way. If someone told him it would really mess with some powerful people if starving Africans got fed, he could make it happen.

  Yeah, I exaggerate, but after almost a year of holding him at a distance with the metaphorical version of a dog-catcher’s pole, I’d seen all of him there was to see. And he didn’t need to hide himself from me, which made him all the more transparent.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. And there it was, Dominic at a loss for words.

  He left soon after, telling me the police would be paying a visit and maybe even searching the place for evidence linking Bobby to the murder of that detective. He knew I hated the police, all authority, and took every opportunity to pass them by, ignore them. Mess with them if I had the chance. Maybe it wasn’t their fault, but they’d been in my life, all my life, a nefarious presence ready to lock up my mom, my dad, my brother. I think he was suggesting that I make sure none of that evidence pointed to me, but I wasn’t too sure. Either way, I had nothing to worry about on that score.

  Once he’d gone, I let myself cry. To begin with, the tears were for Bobby. For a boy who’d been born with a handicap that wasn’t his fault; for a boy who’d never had a chance because of that handicap; and for a boy who I’d never see alive again.

  I sat on the couch and held myself, crying not just tears of sorrow but of guilt. Guilt for not being able to help him, save him. But guilt, too, because of the relief I felt. So much of my life had been devoted to quelling the fear of him, what he might do and where he might end up. Those fears were gone now, blown away by the winds that would soon blow away his ashes. That relief was palpable, and I tried not to feel too much of it.

  As I sat there, clutching a tissue and dabbing at my eyes, I felt a second swell of relief rising within me. For a while now there had been another force in my life, a stressor and an unpredictability that had taken up a monumental amount of emotional and physical energy, a force I would be much happier living without. And that realization hit me hard enough to dry my tears and make me smile, a simple thought resonating loud within me.

  Now that Bobby is gone, I don’t need Dominic anymore.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  DOMINIC

  On Monday morning, Sergeant Brannon came by the Betts unannounced. He wore khakis, a blue blazer, and cowboy boots, and was seated outside my office when I got out of court just before eleven.

  “Do you have a couple of minutes?” he asked.

  “Of course, come in.” I was glad McNulty was still in court.

  He got up and followed me into my office. We sat down either side of my desk, and he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small notebook and a tape recorder. He switched the recorder on and announced his name, my name, and the date and time.

  “I know you’re a busy man,” he said. “I’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

  “No problem; I’m done with court for the day, so I’m all yours.”

  “Thanks. Obviously, this relates to Detective Megan Ledsome’s murder.”

  “I figured.”

  “Yeah, just wrapping up a few loose ends. Just so you know where we’re at, it looks like that kid, Bobby, did it and then killed himself. The gun that was beside him when you found his body, it was a match for the gun that killed Megan.”

  “You did the ballistics already?”

  He nodded. “All hands to the pumps when a cop goes down. The ballistics guy was happy to put everything else aside for this one.”

  “I bet.”

  “Obviously that house was a shit hole, no telling who was in and out of there, but one shot to the head and no indication of a struggle. It was like he went into a little cave and took himself out.”

  “A shame, all of it.” I shook my head sadly.

  “Yeah, no doubt.”

  “Loose ends, you said.” There was only so much fake commiserating I could pull off.

  “Right, yes.” He seemed to gather himself. “So Megan’s husband, do you know him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Greg Shindler, another cop. Good guy. So he went through some of the case papers she’d brought home, collected them all, and made a list for us.”

  “Ah, the second Shindler’s list,” I said, perhaps a little too enthusiastically.

  He looked at me for a moment. “You’ll excuse my lack of a sense of humor right now.”

  “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be glib.”

  He ignored the apology. “One of the things we got from Greg was a stack of letters, maybe five or six.”

  “The ones I told you about.” Nice work, me.

  “Yes, those. I started reading them, figured maybe there was a connection to the kid who shot her.”

  “Makes sense. Was there?”

  “No. No mention of him at all.”

  I shrugged. “She said Tristan Bell is still pretty focused on bringing me down, so that doesn’t surprise me.”

  “I’m just having a hard time getting a solid motive for this fifteen-year-old to kill a detective.”

  “I’m with you on that. It’s beyond me that that anyone would kill a cop. But on the other hand, I know his history and he was escalating. Maybe he just escalated quicker than most.”

  “Nothing violent in his criminal past, though, I checked. Mostly stealing stuff. Phones, cars, all petty crimes.”

  “Was he high when he did it? I’ve seen petty criminals do impulsive stuff, including murder, when they’re high.”


  “No way to know; his body was found too long after.”

  Now, that right there was a lie, and I wondered why he told it. Whether or not drugs were found in a body depended, in cases like this where there was no real decomposition, on when the person died and not on when they were found. In other words, if they lived long enough to metabolize the drugs, then they’d show clean at autopsy, but if they died while hopped up, the coroner would be able to identify what they’d taken. I could only conclude that he was hiding information from me, which meant he was suspicious about something. If I had to guess, I’d say it was about me.

  “That’s a shame,” I said.

  “Back to those letters. You said before you thought she wasn’t investigating you.”

  “Right. Why would she?”

  “Just seems odd she’d keep all those letters, don’t you think?”

  “Not really. Maybe she had a thing for corresponding with killers.”

  “Or having lunch with them.” That surprised me, and he saw it. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that, I was kidding.”

  “Nice that you have your sense of humor back,” I said. My tone was mild but my brain was working, wondering if this really did mean he had something on me. But what?

  “Help me out here, Dominic. I want to close the case, be sure I’ve done my due diligence, but I need to find a better connection between victim and killer. As far as I can tell, she visited him in detention one time. What kind of a connection is that?”

  “For murder, not much of one, I agree.” I frowned in thought. “If Detective Ledsome was looking into whatever crap Bell was peddling, wouldn’t she have made notes?”

  “We didn’t find any, but there may be some on her computer. Greg’s looking.”

  “I mean, I’m sure you’ve thought of this, of course, but she wasn’t robbed? I mean, could this have been random?”

  “Nothing taken. And we looked into the idea it was a gang initiation, but the kid’s PO said he had no affiliation or interest in gangs.”

  “Maybe that changed.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “So, you just know this kid from court.”

  Careful, Dom, that looks and smells like a trick question. If Ledsome knew about my “connection” with Bobby’s sister, maybe this arsehole does.

  Time for a change in strategy.

  “Look.” I leaned forward, lacing my tone with frustration, and just a soupçon of anger. “I don’t mean to be a dick about this, but I’m a little concerned right now. You seem to be more interested in making me look bad than anything else, and I’m not OK with that.”

  “Oh, no.” He held up his hands in surrender. “Nothing like that, not at all.”

  “If Megan thought there was anything to Bell’s horseshit letters, do you really think she’d meet me for lunch and tell me all about it?”

  “Fair point.”

  “Yes, it is. I’m sorry I can’t explain why this kid shot her; believe me, I’d like to. But I can’t. And unless you have other questions, I need to do some work.”

  “Sure, of course.” He stood. “Look, I didn’t mean to offend you, I’m just trying to do my job.”

  “Honestly, I think you’ve already done it.” I took a breath. “Sometimes a tragedy has no rhyme or reason, no matter how much we want it to.”

  After pocketing his recorder and notebook, he put out his hand and we shook. “That’s also very true. Thanks again for your time.”

  He let himself out, and I watched him leave, wondering if he’d also lied about Ledsome’s notes, whether they found some after all. Although it seemed to me that, even if they had, there wasn’t much I could do about it now.

  ◯

  That afternoon, Brian and I had our first round of interviews for the judge position. Brian met with the four interviewers, including Judge Portnoy, from two to three, and I went in afterward.

  “We’re hoping to keep this pretty informal,” Portnoy said when I went in. We sat at a table, Portnoy opposite me and next to Judge Tresha Barger, Brian’s little friend. Two other people bookended the table. To my right sat Judge David Levingston, a jovial fellow whom I knew from criminal district court, and who always tried to talk to me about soccer. On my left was a judge I’d not met, Eric Travis. He was tall and very thin, probably in his mid-fifties, and despite being a criminal district judge, Travis seemed to wear a permanent smile on his face.

  We talked about my background, and Judge Travis seemed fascinated that I was an Englishman in Texas. Not the first time I’d run into an Anglophile. “We were impressed with your idea to meet with the kids informally,” he added.

  “Oh, thanks,” I replied. “You know, it’s one of those things that seemed like a huge deal before we started doing it, but once we got going it was like, Oh, of course we should be doing this. Sometimes it’s easy to kind of hide behind our titles, let them guide our actions instead of thinking deeply about what we’re all trying to achieve here. And one of the things I like the most about being in juvenile is that we’re all essentially on the same page. That’s rare in the courtroom.”

  “Agreed,” said Judge Travis. “It’s very refreshing.”

  “Let me ask you,” Portnoy said. “You’re not board certified in juvenile law, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “And you’ve only been here about a year?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Do you feel that you know enough about juvenile law to be an associate judge?” she asked.

  Meaning, you don’t think that I do. “As I tell people, juvenile law has a steep learning curve, but it’s also fairly short. I think it’s also fair to say that having practiced in the district courts downtown, I have the criminal side of things nailed down pretty tightly.”

  “But that’s just part of what a judge has to know,” Portnoy pressed. For a lady who owed me a favor, she was being a little hostile.

  “Of course. But ask anyone I’ve worked with—you have my references—I’m a fast and willing learner.”

  “I have one concern,” Judge Barger said. “And I’m struggling with how to say it properly.”

  I gave her a reassuring smile. “I’m very hard to offend; please, just tell me.”

  “Well, I’m quite familiar with the music scene here in Austin,” she said. “I know you play in a lot of the clubs, which is totally fine, of course. My worry is twofold, though. First, some of the lyrics to your songs are a little . . . racy, shall we say? I’m just not sure someone who wears a robe during the day should be singing about doing some of the things . . . you know . . .”

  I do have a couple of funny songs that I sing, involving threesomes, hot tubs, and getting busted by the cops. She was really worried about this?

  “Let me ask you this,” I said. “If I were a writer, and I included sex or even a murder in my book, would you say that disqualifies me?”

  “Well, no, I suppose not when you put it like that,” she said dubiously.

  “I’d like to say I’d stop singing those songs but, to be perfectly honest, one of the coolest things about this city is precisely that you could have a judge who also plays music and doesn’t have to censor himself on stage.”

  “Maybe,” Barger said, still unsure. “My other concern is related, I think. I do know that musicians traditionally enjoy the fruits of their labors, in terms of female admirers. Again, I worry that a judge might be putting himself in a precarious position in this regard.”

  Levingston cleared his throat, apparently as uncomfortable with the point she was making as I was annoyed. “I wonder,” he said slowly, “if we had a female candidate here, would we be asking that kind of question? I certainly don’t think I would.”

  Barger bristled. “I’m just trying to—”

  “I know what you mean,” Portnoy jumped in, hoping to right the ship. “I do think that it’s reasonable to expect associate judges to comport themselves appropriately.” She looked at me then, and seemed to blush, apparently remembering o
ur shared secret. “But I think our focus should be on finding a candidate we can trust to do so, rather than try to dictate this or that.” She hurried through her sentence and moved on. “Do you have any questions for us?”

  I asked the ones they expected, about training, hours, and whatever else made me sound interested. It was pretty clear to me that my first run at an associate judge position was going to fail, which was a shame because for a while now I’d really wanted the job.

  I am also a poor loser, to put it mildly.

  Brian did his best to confirm my failure when I’d finished shaking hands with the judges and made it back to my office.

  ◯

  BRIAN

  Dominic took off his tie as soon as he got into the office and threw it on his desk.

  “Well, that was a waste of time,” he said.

  “Didn’t go well?”

  “Apparently being a musician isn’t compatible with wearing a robe.”

  “Seriously? This is Austin.”

  “Precisely what I told them. One of the judges seemed worried I was having too much sex.”

  “No way!”

  “Ah, well, not a problem they’ll have with you, so there’s that.” He sank into his chair and swung his feet up onto the desk.

  “They can’t say stuff like that, though.”

  “What am I going to do about it?” Dominic said. “Sue them?”

  “Good point.” He seemed annoyed, and rightly. “Well, once I’m in the job, I’ll put in a good word for you. Maybe that’ll help.”

  “You’re pulling on that robe mighty early.”

  “You just said it didn’t go well for you.”

  “Correct, but I think you’re forgetting about Mo,” Dom said. “My money would be on her.”

  “Ah, no. I don’t think so.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I had a brief word with Judge Portnoy after my interview. Let’s just say she seems to think I’m the best man, person, for the job.”