Two Lost Boys

by L. F. Robertson

  From the bench, as if from a supersized pulpit, Judge Fuentes looked around the courtroom and down at Jim and me. She was about my age, I guessed. Her hair was short and dark brown, and her face, fine-featured and dark-eyed, was a mask of authority, nearly unreadable.

  Jim explained why we were asking for a couple of extra months to file the petition, choosing his words carefully because the deputy attorney general, Brenda Collinson, was in the courtroom with us. She immediately objected to our getting more time. Ms. Collinson was probably in her mid-forties, with blond highlights and a taut, disapproving face. She was wearing a dark gray suit with a pencil skirt that showed off her skinny hips, and on her left hand she flashed a really serious diamond wedding ring set. When Jim had introduced us before the start of the hearing, she had given me an appraising look, assessing how I might change the dynamic of the case, before dismissing me as inconsequential and turning back to Jim, to say, “I really don’t see why you need extra time just because you want to hire another expert.”

  Brenda made the same argument to the court, with a few flourishes. “Your Honor, this case has gone on for fourteen years. It’s not fair to the victims’ families or the public to drag it out any more.”

  Judge Fuentes thanked her and turned to Jim. “Actually, Mr. Christie, this case is over fifteen years old. You had a year from your appointment to file a petition, and nearly five months of that year is left. I’m not convinced you need additional time for your expert to finish his work. If there’s some reason why you need more time after he has evaluated your client, I’ll entertain a motion then. But for now, I’m denying your request.”

  Ouch. “Thank you, Your Honor,” we all said, more or less in unison—some of us more sincerely than others.

  The judge announced a date and time a month away for the next telephone status conference, and after another round of thank-yous, announced that she would proceed to the ex parte hearing on our request for funds. Ms. Collinson left, and the marshal cleared the courtroom of the two or three random spectators who always seem to be lounging in the audience section of even the dullest hearing.

  Judge Fuentes looked around the courtroom and recited, in the general direction of us and the court reporter, “We’re here in closed session to discuss the application of petitioner’s counsel for additional expert and investigative funds.” That finished, she seemed to relax a little. She looked down at Jim and me.

  “So. You have a potential Atkins issue in your case.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Jim said, and I nodded agreement.

  “I’ve read your application and your proposed amendment to your budget. Do you have anything additional to say on the question of funding?”

  The judge’s mention of our expert at the status conference had seemed like a signal that she planned to give us the funds, so Jim merely said, “No, Your Honor. Unless you have any questions, we’ll submit the matter.”

  “Okay,” Judge Fuentes said. “I’m going to grant the motion for additional funds. Is there anything else?”

  “No, Your Honor. Thank you.”

  “All right, then. We’re adjourned.” We waited, standing, as she stood up, smoothed her robe with a quick gesture, turned, and left through the door behind the bench to her chambers. Gathering up our papers, we left the courtroom in silence, with a nod to the marshal.

  “Well, that was pretty painless,” Jim said as we waited for the elevator. “Not like my case in LA. Getting anything out of Judge Brougham is like pulling teeth. He acts like it’s his own money.”

  “More time would have been good, though.”

  “Yeah, but so it goes.” Jim shrugged. “I think she’ll give it to us if we need it.” The elevator came, and we joined a small group of suits and rode in silence to the first floor.

  In the lobby, Jim picked up where he’d left off. “I’m going to be busy with a big discovery hearing in that gang case. You’ve been working with Dr. Moss; could you call him and let him know we can retain him?”

  “I may as well,” I said, feeling like an enabler. I also offered to draft a retainer letter and referral questions—our instructions to the expert—rather than leaving them to Jim.

  “Great,” Jim said. “I’m going to come back up and see Andy in a month or so. Couldn’t on this trip because I’m in depositions this week on a civil case.”

  Outside, the air was hot and full of street noises and smells of car exhaust and fried food. Jim’s car was parked not far from mine, and as we walked he told me about his civil case. His clients were the two small children of a couple who had been killed in a truck accident. “Little boy, five, and his sister, who’s only three. Cutest kids, and their grandmother’s raising them. Trucking company’s insurer is trying to give them a lowball settlement because they’re African American. It’s just racism, pure and simple. But the company’s going to settle; it has to. The trucker was completely at fault. I want to get enough to help the grandmother raise the kids and give them money for college.”

  People may bitch about lawyers, but we do good once in a while. “Good luck,” I said.

  23

  It was a sweaty September day in Canfield, Washington, and the small living room, with its oversized furniture and wall-to-wall shag carpet, seemed like a hot cocoon, but one that smelled a little bit like beef stew and air freshener.

  “I’ve got to admit, we were surprised to hear from you,” Mrs. Kitteridge said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve heard much of anything about Andy. Would you like some iced tea?” She stood uncertainly at the door between the living room and the kitchen.

  “Yes, thank you,” Dave and I said almost as one.

  Charlene Kitteridge, the new wife of Evie Hardy’s first husband, was tall and heavy, with broad shoulders and a massive torso balanced on legs that, large as they were, seemed inadequate to hold the upper part of her body. She wore tan shorts and a baggy lavender T-shirt with a faded flower design on the front. Her face was squarish, with small pale blue eyes and a helmet of short ash-blond hair. She moved her bulk deliberately through the door, seeming not so much to walk as simply to flow from one spot to the next, like a ship under sail.

  Jimmy Kitteridge, as small and wiry as his wife was massive, was dressed in the rancher’s uniform of new-looking jeans and a short-sleeved plaid shirt. He stood nervously in front of an armchair upholstered in a pattern of cabbage roses. Nearby, a big sofa in the same flowered pattern crowded all the other furniture into the edges of the room. Jimmy had a leather tan like an old cowboy, but his hair was full and silvery, and his face was broad in the cheekbones and pointed in the chin, giving him an almost elfin look. In their teens, I thought, he and Evie must have been a cute couple. It was harder to imagine him paired with his present wife.

  He invited us to sit, waited until we settled ourselves on the sofa, and then settled into his chair. A ceiling fan above us spun its blades without much effect, and a rotating floor fan next to the television swept an intermittent breeze of warm air across the room. The television was on, showing a golf game. Jimmy picked up a remote control and muted the sound as Charlene came back with two iced teas, which she set on coasters on the shining wood of the coffee table. “Jim, honey, I forgot to ask you. Can I get you some more iced tea?” she asked, as she straightened herself.

  He looked at her, and his face brightened a little with a look of solicitous kindness. “No, that’s okay, Charl. Come sit down; it’s a hot day to be moving around in.”

  She obliged, lowering herself carefully into a recliner on the other side of the sofa from Jim’s armchair. “Oh, this weather!” she sighed. “Summer’s supposed to be over; I don’t know where it’s coming from. And I hate to run the air conditioner because our power bills just go through the roof.”

  “So you’re Andy’s lawyers now?” Jimmy asked.

  “I’m one of them,” I said. “Dave Rothstein, here, is an investigator.” I pulled out a couple of business cards and handed one each to Jimmy and Charlene.
Charlene looked hers over carefully.

  “He was found guilty, what, ten years ago?” she said. “What more is there to do?”

  I mentally cleared my throat and gave the simplified explanation, about how Andy had the right to present evidence that might show that his trial wasn’t fair and maybe get a new one on the question of whether he should really be sentenced to death row, and how we had been appointed by the court and were talking with people to see if there was helpful evidence that Andy’s trial attorney could have put on but didn’t. I threw in a mention of Emory, who had had a different attorney and had not gotten the death penalty.

  “You’re trying to get him released from prison?” Charlene asked, still suspicious. “He killed those girls, didn’t he? He shouldn’t ever get out, if you ask me.”

  Dave spoke, adding the credibility of his baritone voice to the conversation. “Frankly,” he said, “it isn’t likely he’ll get released. Realistically, the best that’s likely to happen is that his sentence could be reduced to life in prison.”

  Charlene nodded curtly, as if that was better than he deserved, as far as she was concerned. I took a drink of iced tea—it was home-made and sweet.

  Jimmy spoke up. “Well, you know, we didn’t really know Andy or his brother that well. I only saw them once in a while when they visited Ray and Margaret—Eva’s aunt and uncle who raised her. They were just kids then, so I don’t really know…” His voice tapered off, uncertainly, in mid-sentence.

  “I understand,” Dave said. “We’ve come to see you because we’re looking for whatever we can learn about Andy’s background—family history, influences, and so forth. We’d like to learn more about Eva and her side of the family, for example.”

  “Oh, Eva!” Charlene’s big voice drew the words out in a scornful drawl. “She’s a piece of work, that one.”

  Jimmy gave her an almost reproachful look, which she ignored. “She just left Carla—her daughter, you know?—with Jimmy’s parents. Never did a thing for her. They raised her for years, until Jimmy and I got married. Every now and then Evie would come back and stir things up, talk about taking her back with her, get Carla’s hopes up. Most of the time, though, she just seemed to forget the girl. We had to call her just to get her to let Carla visit for a couple of weeks in the summer. Poor kid, couldn’t ever figure out why her mother didn’t want her.”

  “I guess that’s one reason we’d like to learn more about Evie,” Dave said. “It’s a little unusual for a mother to just give custody of her child away like that.”

  “Why don’t you ask her? You’ve met her, haven’t you?” Charlene asked.

  “Oh yes,” I said. “But there’s so much we don’t know about her, about Andy’s family background at all, really.”

  Jimmy turned his head to me. “Her aunt and uncle never said much, but I believe something bad happened to Evie before she came to live with them.”

  “What was it—do you know?”

  “I wasn’t ever real sure, just that there was some big secret about why she came to live out here. Her parents were dead; I knew that. Evie said they died in a car wreck, but there was this rumor that they were murdered.”

  “Murdered?” Dave asked.

  Jimmy shook his head. “Just small-town gossip, I think. I never believed it.”

  “Did Evie ever say anything?” I asked.

  “No—she never talked about her parents, and I never pushed her. I thought she just wanted to have a normal life, whatever it was that had happened, and I tried to respect that. My mom and dad, I remember, they didn’t want me to get engaged to her, but they never could come up with a reason why. But then Evie found out she was expecting, and they had to let us get married.”

  Charlene broke in. “I’m not so sure your parents weren’t right. Look at how her kids came out. Carla, too.”

  Dave went for the opening she had made. “What happened to Carla?”

  Jimmy gave a small, weary sigh. “Drugs.”

  “It’s an awful thing,” Charlene broke in, sitting up in her armchair. “Meth, cocaine, oxy—all that stuff. I don’t know how many people’s lives around here have been ruined by that junk. I work in social services here—just part-time these days, thank the Lord—it makes you sick seeing these women lose their kids, and the kids end up in foster homes. Same thing would have happened to Carla and her baby, except for Jimmy and me.”

  “Carla had a child?” Evie had never mentioned that she had a grandchild.

  “Oh yes,” Charlene said. “Austin. Evie never told you about him?”

  “No,” Dave and I said.

  She sniffed. “Typical. Her only grandchild. Never even a birthday card.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “County took him away from Carla when he was—honey, was Austin two or three when we took him in?”

  Jimmy thought. “I think he wasn’t quite two. I remember he had his second birthday with us.”

  “Oh, right. We never had kids, just miscarriages. Austin was my baby. We raised him like our own. Made Carla sign over legal guardianship of him to us.”

  “How old is he now?” Dave asked.

  “He turned twenty-two in March.”

  “Oh, so he’s pretty grown-up,” Dave said. “Does he still live with you?”

  “No,” Jimmy said. “He’s in Spokane. In a home.” As if answering the question we hadn’t the presence of mind to ask, he went on. “He’s autistic. We kept him as long as we could, but he finally got too big for Charl to handle.”

  “And he needed help we just couldn’t get for him here,” Charlene added.

  “He’d have tantrums,” Jimmy said. “Throw himself around the room, break stuff.”

  Charlene’s eyes filled with tears. “I hated to do it,” she said.

  “We go see him every month,” Jimmy said. “I’m sure he’s happier there,” he said, as much to Charlene as to us. “Staff there take good care of him, and they can handle him when he goes off. To be honest, I don’t think he misses us, really.”

  “I still think it was the drugs she was using that caused it,” Charlene said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

  “Oh come on, honey, we don’t know that,” Jimmy answered. It sounded like an old argument, half-heartedly reprised.

  Dave discreetly changed the subject. “Do you know where Evie came from, originally?” he asked, in a tone of voice that made it seem almost an afterthought.

  Jimmy pondered this. “Iowa, I think.”

  “I know this is probably a pretty personal question,” Dave continued, “but can you tell me about your relationship with Evie, and why your marriage broke up?”

  “Oh,” Jimmy said, with a sigh, “it was just the usual, I guess. We married too young, and we wanted different things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, Evie wanted to get out and go somewhere, wanted to see more of the world. And I didn’t. I grew up here, had my family, a job I liked in my dad’s machine shop. I was happy, but she wasn’t. And it just kind of ended. She wanted to go to community college, move to Spokane or Seattle, and that’s what she did.”

  “Leaving Carla behind,” I said.

  “Yeah, well,” Jimmy said, doubtfully. “I don’t think she really meant to leave Carla permanently. I think she thought she could get her when she got through school and got a decent job. But then she met Len—and I guess things changed.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, she had the boys, and there was Len’s drinking and all. I never could see how she got involved with him, but I think after a while she was kind of afraid of him.”

  “Len was that bad?”

  “Well,” Jimmy said, “not to speak ill of the man…” He hesitated, as if trying to think of a charitable way to describe Len. “But he was kind of a slick talker, not someone you felt you could trust. And you could see he had a mean streak. They came to visit, and it was like, if Len was around, Evie and the boys were always real quiet. If they said something he
didn’t like, he’d give them a look, and they’d just shut up. He killed a man—maybe Evie told you about that—went to prison, six or seven years, while the boys were still young.”

  “We did hear that,” Dave said. “And we heard that he jumped parole, and no one seems to know where he is.”

  “Yeah, I heard that, too,” Jimmy said vaguely.

  “When you saw Andy back then,” Dave asked, “how did he strike you?”

  Jimmy paused for a few seconds, as though looking for the right words. “Quiet, I’d say. Kinda lonely. Emory was rambunctious, really a handful, but Andy always seemed to hang back.”

  “What kinds of things did Andy like to do?” Dave asked.

  “Oh, go fishing with me. Help in the garden. Stuff like that.”

  “Did he read?” Dave asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure he could.”

  “But for fun?”

  “No—not that I ever saw. Neither of ’em did.”

  “Did he play games with other children?”

  “Yeah, when they’d let him. He didn’t fit in too well. Emory used to call him names, and I think the other kids picked it up.”

  “What kind of names?”

  Jimmy thought for a moment, sifting through memories. “I’d like to say it was something like ‘stupid,’ but I don’t remember well.”

  “Did he seem stupid to you?”

  “Not really, maybe a little slow. He was a slow learner—I never could teach him how to cast or bait a hook right. But then I only saw him once in a while. They’d stay at Evie’s aunt and uncle’s when they visited.”

  Dave asked some more questions about Andy’s limitations: could he count change, get himself a snack; did he need help with getting dressed, and so forth. Jimmy hadn’t seen Andy enough to remember much. “Carla would remember,” he said. “She liked him, kind of took him under her wing. And she was around him more than I ever was.”