Good Intentions

by J. D. Trafford

  “That’s not what happened.”

  “You pled guilty to those charges, kidnapping and rape.”

  “Upon the advice of my lawyer.” Thill pursed his lips and looked at his two daughters in the gallery. “Should’ve never tried to help her. She was a disturbed girl. Lots of mental problems, you know?”

  Norgaard ignored the question, moving on. “Ten years later, you’re out of prison. Within a few months, you became a suspect in an attempted kidnapping. Isn’t that right?”

  “I’m always a suspect.” He held his head high. “Harassment is a better term for what them cops do.”

  “A young woman, sixteen years old, a runaway, is lured into a car by a man offering her some marijuana. She gets in the car. The man punches her three times in the head. She loses consciousness and then wakes up in an abandoned house—alone, naked, with duct tape on her eyes. The door is locked, but she escapes through a window and gets help. Do you remember that?”

  “I do not,” Thill said. “Wasn’t me.”

  “Sounds like you.”

  He shook his head. “Wasn’t me.”

  “Do you remember the police searching your apartment?”

  “I do. The pigs trashed it. Flipped everything over. Took everything out of my drawers.”

  “Do you remember what you had in a storage trunk underneath your bed?”

  “Nope.” He looked at me. He wanted me to stop the questioning, but Norgaard was well within her rights to make a record of his background.

  “You don’t remember having a collection of pornography in this trunk?”

  “Nope.”

  “The pornography featured bondage, torture of women. Really, they weren’t pornos so much as video recordings of sexual assault, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “When was this?”

  Norgaard ignored his question. “Also in the storage trunk were newspaper clippings. Did you cut out those newspaper stories?”

  “I don’t recall. Long time ago.”

  “They were newspaper stories about missing children, mostly young women. You don’t remember having this collection in your apartment in your storage trunk?”

  “I don’t remember. Sounds like stuff that cops would plant on me, trying to get me in trouble. They always be harassing me.”

  “You were never charged for that crime, but seven months later you were charged with another crime. It was the attempted kidnapping of a twenty-year-old waitress. It was the end of her shift. She was taking garbage out to the dumpster in the back of the bar, and you grabbed her and tried to force her into your car. One of the bartenders heard the noise, rushed outside, and he subdued you until the police arrived.”

  “They stole my money. Bitch was flirting with me all night, asks if I want a blow job. Tells me to meet her behind the bar after close. Then the bartender jumps me, takes all my money, and tells the cops this story.”

  “You were convicted of attempted kidnapping, true?”

  Thill didn’t answer.

  “You were charged with this crime, and ultimately you pled guilty to attempted kidnapping.”

  “It wasn’t going to make a difference what I said. The prosecutors and the cops and the judges, they all got my number. They were going to send me away for life unless I pled.”

  “That night,” Norgaard said. “The one with the waitress and the bartender, the police searched your car, correct?”

  “Don’t know.” He sighed, as if simultaneously annoyed and bored with the proceedings. “Are we almost done?”

  “When I’m done, we’re done,” Norgaard said. “And I’m not done.” She looked at her notes again, finding her place. “So as I was asking you, the police searched your car the night of your arrest and they found a roll of duct tape, rubber gloves, and condoms. Is that correct?”

  “It wasn’t mine.”

  “You think the police planted those items in your car as well?”

  “I have no doubt.”

  “And now let’s talk about what happened a year ago.” Norgaard picked up a file from the table and flipped it open. “You are out of prison for approximately three months. And you’re working as a dishwasher at a restaurant. A woman you work with, who is nineteen, agreed to party with you at a hotel. She tells you that she’s got a friend. And you meet up at this hotel room later that night. You asked her how old her friend was, and she says sixteen.”

  “That’s not true. I’m not talking about any more of these lies.”

  At this point, Finley probably should have objected, but he didn’t. I was going to allow it. The testimony was relevant to whether Peter Thill’s children were safe, and I wanted Benji Metina to hear about his background.

  “You got to the hotel room. They wanted marijuana and alcohol, and you agreed to give it to them if the sixteen-year-old stripped for you. Isn’t that true?”

  “Nope.” Thill remained defiant.

  “You asked her to masturbate for you?”

  “Never happened,” he said. “That’s why them charges were dropped, because it wasn’t true.”

  “No,” Norgaard said. “The charges were dropped because the victim wouldn’t cooperate with the prosecution.”

  “They was dropped because the police made it up.”

  Norgaard pressed Thill regarding his criminal history for another forty minutes, and then she transitioned to Thill’s treatment at Nexus Addiction Center. “You received cognitive treatment for your sex addiction and violent thinking, isn’t that right?”

  “Probation made me go.” Thill’s eyes narrowed and he shifted in his seat. “I ain’t got no problems.”

  “You received this treatment from Dr. Nigel Paul, is that correct?”

  “Can’t remember his name.” Thill blew it off. “If you say so, then that’s his name.”

  “Maybe this would be a good time, Your Honor, to admit the records of Mr. Thill’s treatment at Nexus Addiction.” Norgaard picked up a stack of paper, approximately three inches thick. “At this time, I’d like to admit Exhibits 114 through 160, previously stipulated to by the parties.”

  I looked at Finley, but he didn’t look up. He was writing something down on his notepad, trying to avoid eye contact with his client. “We already objected to all of these therapy documents in a pretrial motion. The court ruled against us, but my objection remains.”

  The documents were admitted, and Norgaard pushed forward. “I want to direct the court’s attention to Exhibit 132.” Norgaard removed an exhibit from her own stack of copies and glanced over it, confirming that the exhibit was the one she wanted. “This is a dream journal that you wrote, true?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “May I approach, Your Honor?” I waved her forward, and she walked up to the witness stand. Thill was working hard to contain his anger. “This is your handwriting, Mr. Thill, correct?” She held the exhibit in front of him.

  “I suppose.”

  Norgaard put her hand on her hip. “You don’t recognize your own handwriting?”

  Thill clinched his jaw, and he ultimately agreed.

  “And in this dream journal you were encouraged to write about your dreams and fantasies, and then you could discuss them with the therapist and address the thinking and values behind them, true?”

  “They made me write that stuff,” Thill said. “The doctor said I would be discharged from the program unless I wrote some stuff, and so I made it up because I didn’t want to get in trouble with probation.”

  “In the dream journal, you talked about your family, isn’t that true?”

  “I don’t want to do this anymore.” Thill started to get up from the witness chair, but I directed him to sit back down. He looked at me as if he was going to spit, and then he turned back to Norgaard. “I wrote what I wrote.”

  “You referred to your sons as homosexuals, and that you needed to show them how to be real men, isn’t that right? You wrote, if you couldn’t set them straight, then they’d have to be culled. You said that some branches
of the family tree need to be trimmed.”

  “I made all that up for the doctor so that he could think he was teaching me something.”

  “And you also told the doctor that your daughters were almost ripe, isn’t that true?”

  “You’re blowing it way out.” Thill looked away. “It’s all a game. This whole therapy, mental health, corrections, courts, lawyers, it’s just money, people trying to make money off me.”

  “Mr. Thill, you blame your wife for being here, don’t you?”

  “Damn right.” Thill puffed out his chest. “She babied them boys, made them into sissies. Let the girls run wild, and then couldn’t keep herself clean. I got no reason to be here. Now, you want to take me away from my kids. Kids that love me and want to be with me. They know the truth about you.”

  Thill turned and looked at me. “How’d you feel if I took someone away from you?” he asked. “What if that wife of yours disappeared?”

  I stared at Thill and thought about Nikki and how she’d felt like somebody had been watching her at work. Then I thought about Thill’s Facebook posts. Thill had posted pictures of a gun, a box of bullets, and a roll of duct tape. The bailiff had tried to warn me, but I’d shrugged it off. Now my skin crawled. “That’s enough.” I forced myself to focus. I needed to do the trial and move on.

  Norgaard shook her head, and Finley remained silent. She was nearing the end of her examination. “Let’s go back to your wife,” she said. “You met her between your early stints in prison, true?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She was seventeen when you met her.”

  “When I met her, she was seventeen,” Thill said. “Nineteen when we got married.”

  “You like young women, don’t you?”

  The question caught Thill for a moment, but he recovered. “I did.” He looked at me, then turned back to Norgaard. “But now as an older man”—Thill stared at her, his voice a pitch lower, each word spoken with deliberation—“I find the young ones don’t do it for me as much anymore, you know?” With his eyes locked on Norgaard, Thill ran his tongue across his lip. “I now find myself fantasizing more about older women.”

  The room went cold and silent as Norgaard stuttered to a close.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Karen had stayed at work, determined to get the spreadsheet done. She eventually e-mailed me a copy after dinner, and while Nikki sat on the couch and read her book, I began to play with the data.

  It was everything I had requested. The database contained all of Judge Meyer’s cases during the 1990s. The file was big, but not as big as I had thought. Karen had predicted twenty-five hundred cases. There were just under nine hundred, but Karen’s e-mail stated that she narrowed the query’s scope by excluding families that had appeared before Judge Meyer only once or resolved their cases quickly.

  I looked at the old photographs again, then set them aside.

  I planned on sifting through the data line by line, but I quickly learned that my approach was not as straightforward as I had thought.

  The spreadsheet did not include the children’s race or gender. Sometimes I could guess the race by last name, but not always. The gender might be clear if the child’s name was Matthew or Ella, but even that wasn’t simple.

  Age was an entirely different problem. Karen had included the age of each child, but I wasn’t exactly sure which ages I was looking for.

  All I had were the photographs, and the photographs didn’t have any of that information. I wasn’t even sure whether the photo was taken near the time that the child protection matter had started. The fact that I was creating an age range for not just one child, but four, made it seem like guesswork.

  There were too many variables.

  I went over to the couch and sat next to Nikki. She closed her book and put her arm around me. “What’s the problem?”

  I explained what I was trying to do, and she listened patiently. “Do you want me to listen or try and help you solve it?”

  That was easy. “Solve it?”

  “OK,” she said. “Your problem is that you are analyzing every data point for every family. You need to work backward. Instead of trying to find families that meet all of your criteria, go through and find the families that don’t as quickly as possible.”

  I sat up a little straighter.

  “Start with family size,” she said. “Just go through and eliminate every family that has the wrong number of kids. Then maybe focus on gender or race—whatever eliminates the biggest number the fastest. Then you can refine the search criteria when the numbers are smaller and more manageable.”

  I kissed her. “You’re a genius.”

  Nikki smiled. “And sexy?”

  “Yes.” I kissed her again. “The sexiest genius I know.”

  I went back to the computer and started again. This time I switched my approach. Rather than trying to be inclusive, searching case by case for a family that met all my criteria, I became exclusive. I focused my energy on eliminating cases, narrowing the pool.

  By the time we went to bed, I had the list of nine hundred families down to twenty. I looked at the photograph of the three kids and the baby.

  I was getting close.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  When I got onto the elevator at the courthouse the next morning, I didn’t push the button to take me up to my chambers. I had an errand to run first. I needed to see the file clerk in the basement.

  The basement hallway was empty. I walked down the corridor to the Records Department, then up to the counter. A lonely file clerk was in the back shuffling paper, and I went unnoticed.

  I tapped the button on a small nickel-plated call bell. A clear, steady ring got the clerk’s attention, and she came to the counter. When she recognized me, she looked like she’d seen a ghost. “Judge Thompson.” The clerk forced a smile. Even in the dark, windowless basement, I’m sure she’d heard the rumors of my demise. “I don’t see many judges down here.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m not like most judges.” It was meant as a joke, but the clerk wasn’t sure whether or not she should laugh. An awkward silence followed, and I decided I should be the one to break it. “Can you get these files for me?” I took a folded piece of paper from my pocket and placed it on the counter. It was a list of the twenty cases I’d narrowed down from the spreadsheet. “They’re old cases, before everything got scanned.”

  The clerk looked at the list of names and file numbers. Child protection and adoption records often fell into a gray area. The statute governing whether these files were confidential was complicated, but I wasn’t a reporter. I was a judge, and the court clerks were repeatedly instructed to give a judge whatever he or she wanted.

  Eventually she nodded. “I can pull them.”

  “Good.” I looked at my watch. “About how long will it take?”

  She thought about it. “Depends on what archive they got sent to. If they’re still stored here, it’d only take a day or two. If they were sent to the warehouses, it could take longer.”

  I wanted to get a better time frame. “Like a week?”

  The clerk didn’t want to commit. “Maybe, maybe longer. There’s one warehouse in Fremont, and another in Livermore. Fremont is usually faster.”

  “OK.” I gave her my card with my cell phone number written on the back. “Call me when you’ve got them. I’ll pick them up myself.”

  “Are you sure?” Few, if any, judges had probably ever spoken directly to her, and certainly no judges had ever given her their personal cell phone number.

  “I’m sure.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  In re the Honorable James Thompson

  California State Board on Judicial Standards

  Inquiry Transcript, Excerpt

  BOARD MEMBER GREEN: Isn’t it true that you ordered your law clerk to compile a large database related to Judge Meyer’s old cases?

  THOMPSON: I’m not sure that I ordered her to do anything, but I did ask her
if she would assist me with some research.

  BOARD MEMBER GREEN: But it wasn’t really legal research, was it? You wanted to find the children that were in one of Judge Meyer’s photographs, true?

  THOMPSON: That was part of my research. I thought it would be a nice hook for whatever article I was going to write.

  BOARD MEMBER GREEN: And you also thought that one of those kids was responsible for Judge Meyer’s death?

  THOMPSON: It was a hunch, but that was Detective Jarkowski’s job.

  BOARD MEMBER GREEN: And as part of your purported research, you directed someone from the district’s IT department to assist your law clerk, true?

  THOMPSON: My law clerk wanted some help, and she reached out to the IT department. I didn’t have anything to do with it. I certainly didn’t order anybody to help her.

  BOARD MEMBER GREEN: And then you personally directed a document clerk to contact the district’s archives and pull approximately twenty files out of the warehouse and transport them to the main courthouse, is that correct?

  THOMPSON: Yes. I wanted to read them.

  BOARD MEMBER GREEN: And who gave you permission to access this information and use district resources in this manner?

  [Pause]

  THOMPSON: I don’t need permission.

  BOARD MEMBER GREEN: Because you’re a judge?

  THOMPSON: Because it’s public information.

  This was the portion of the board’s inquiry that focused on an abuse of power, misusing an individual’s status as a judge for personal purposes. I saw the records in front of Nick Green. Even from across the table, I could see he had everything. There were two dozen exhibits, including e-mails from my law clerk, Karen, to the IT Department as well as the various forms that the records clerk needed to fill out in order to access the county’s archive.

  “We’ve gone around and around about this, Judge Thompson, and it seems apparent that you are not being candid with the panel.” After sitting at the table all day, it was the first thing Judge Pamela Nitz had said in several hours.