by Joel Goldman
The call was from an unidentified private number. The last anonymous call she’d gotten had been from Judge West. He’d called her burner phone, but this call was to her regular cell phone. That didn’t make her any more willing to answer it without knowing who was calling. She let it ring, waiting to see if the caller would leave a message.
The ringing stopped, and a moment later, the phone chirped, announcing that she had a message. She opened the phone and played it.
“Ms. Stone, this is Judge Steele. After we spoke yesterday I remembered the young woman you asked me about. I’d be happy to visit with you if you’d like to stop by my chambers this morning. No need to return my call.”
Before Bonnie left for the hospital, she gave Alex strict instructions to take it easy for the next few days. Alex promised to do as she was told, but she couldn’t ignore Judge Steele’s message, certain why he had called. It was one thing to deny remembering Joanie. It was another to deny it knowing that Alex was going to get medical records that identified him as the one who’d paid for Joanie’s treatment at Fresh Start. Better to come clean than to invite more questions. And volunteering would buy him credibility for any other denials. Alex could have called him back and let him tell her over the phone, but she wanted to hear it in person to better evaluate whether he was telling the truth.
She had another reason for going. Staying in bed, cooped up in the house, made her feel more trapped than safe. If someone wanted to kill her, she liked her chances better in Judge Steele’s chambers than as a sitting duck at home.
She eased herself out of bed and into her clothes, each movement launching a jolt of pain through her midback. She dug through her T-shirt drawer, slipping into one with a favorite marines saying on the front—Pain is only weakness leaving the body. Repeating it out loud made her feel better already.
Judge Steele sat on the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District of Missouri. It was the only intermediate appellate court in Missouri that had its own courthouse. Located at Thirteenth and Oak in the shadow of the Sprint Center, it was the southernmost of the trio of courthouses on Oak that included the Federal Courthouse at Ninth and the Jackson County Courthouse at Twelfth.
The judge’s secretary ushered Alex into his chambers. It was twice the size of Judge West’s, a beautiful Oriental rug covering the center of the hardwood floor, two chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and walls lined with mahogany bookshelves jammed with case reporters and statutes. State and federal flags stood behind the judge’s desk, draped floor-to-ceiling windows completing the backdrop.
Judge Steele sat at an oval table on one side of the room, wearing khakis, a long-sleeved polo shirt, and deck shoes without socks, one shoe off and dangling from his toes. He looked up from the brief he was reading, his glasses partway down his nose.
“Come on in, Alex. You’re awfully pale. Are you all right? Have a seat, please.”
She held one hand over her wounds, grimacing as she slid onto the chair, not wanting to talk about what happened.
“Sort of threw my back out yesterday.”
“Believe me, I’ve been there with the way my wife makes me work out. She’s a fitness buff and I suffer for it.”
Alex was surprised at his informality, since formality was one of a judge’s strongest assets. Lawyers called them by their honorific title as if using their given names was forbidden. Rules against ex parte communications stifled casual conversation. Their black robes and elevated courtroom benches were a reminder of their exalted status. On the few occasions she’d run into judges on a weekend, dressed like civilians and running errands like ordinary folks, she’d almost failed to recognize them. But here was Judge Steele, dressed down and kicking back.
“I didn’t know the Court of Appeals had adopted a casual dress code.”
“If you had gotten here an hour ago, you’d have caught me in my workout clothes,” he said, chuckling and pointing to the duffel bag on the floor. “One of the little-known perks of being an appellate judge is that I can wear whatever I want as long as we don’t have any oral arguments scheduled. And if there’s an emergency hearing of some kind, I just put on my robe and no one can tell what I’m wearing underneath. It’s kind of like the TV anchorman who reads the news wearing a shirt, jacket, tie, boxers, and nothing else.”
Alex smiled. Not taking himself too seriously was part of the judge’s charm.
“Your message said that you remembered Joanie Sutherland.”
“Yes, but not at first. You mentioned something about Fresh Start, and later on, when I was telling my wife, she said that Joanie was probably one of the people whose treatment we had paid for over the years. I went back and checked our records, and, sure enough, that’s what happened.”
Alex arched her eyebrows. “You and your wife pay for other people’s treatment at Fresh Start?”
“Well, not personally. My parents were wealthy—quite wealthy, actually. That’s why I can afford to be a judge. They set up the Steele Family Foundation for their charitable work. I had an older brother who died of a drug overdose when he was only twenty-five. My parents blamed themselves for not recognizing what bad shape he was in and doing something to save him. So, they made prevention and treatment of substance abuse one of the foundation’s priorities, including paying for the treatment of low-income people who wouldn’t otherwise get the quality of care that Fresh Start provides.”
“How did Joanie Sutherland get on that list?”
“COMBAT, Jackson County’s drug abuse prevention program, referred her.”
“We’re you personally involved in approving payment for her?”
“I’m certain I was. Since my parents died, I’m in charge of the foundation, and those applications come across my desk for approval.”
Alex was deflated. She’d thought she’d gotten lucky with a long shot. Judge Steele’s explanation made sense, and since it was easily verifiable, he had no reason to lie. Still, she decided to press.
“Did you or the foundation provide any other financial support to Joanie?”
“Not that I’m aware of, at least not directly. We don’t make grants to people like Joanie because there’s too much risk that the money won’t be well spent. We support organizations and programs that help people like her and she may have benefited from one of those, though the foundation doesn’t keep records of the people who use those services.”
It was the answer Alex expected. “Well, that explains that. Thank you for your time, Your Honor.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, why were you so interested in knowing who paid her medical bills?”
“Because lending a helping hand can get pretty expensive if someone asks for too much help.”
“Ah, I see. And you think Ms. Sutherland may have been such a person and that may have gotten her killed.”
“It’s possible.”
He leaned back in his chair, hands clasped in his lap and smiled. “Which means you thought, to be blunt, that I might have killed her because she was blackmailing me.”
Alex blushed. “I’m sorry, Your Honor, I . . .”
He waved her off. “You were just doing your job, and in a way, I’m flattered that anyone might think that someone as boring as I am could be caught up in something so dramatic. Thank you for helping me hold up my end of the dinner table conversation tonight when Sonia asks me about my day.”
**
Alex returned home, worn-out. She poured herself into her easy chair in the den and took a nap. After lunch she stayed at the kitchen table, using her laptop to catch up on her e-mail. Late in the afternoon, Grace Canfield called her.
“Where’ve you been all day?”
Alex didn’t want Grace worrying and asking too many questions.
“Home with a cold.”
“Drink plenty of liquids.”
“I promise.”
“I got Joanie’s records from Fresh Start.”
“Let me guess. The Steele Family Foundation paid for he
r treatment.”
“If you knew that, why did you run my butt around to get these records?”
Alex laughed. “I just found out this morning,” she said, filling Grace in on her conversation with Judge Steele.
“So you were well enough to go see the judge but too sick to tell me what he said so I wouldn’t spend my day hollering at some poor medical records clerk at Fresh Start?”
“Sorry, but we needed the records anyway to confirm what the judge said.”
“Those records may be more important than that. Didn’t you say that Charlotte was Bethany Sutherland’s daughter?”
“That’s what Bethany told me.”
“Well, according to these records, Joanie told the doctors at Fresh Start that she was Charlotte’s mother.”
“Really? Did she say who the father was?”
“Said she didn’t know, which I can believe, given her chosen occupation. Anyway, I checked the city’s birth records and Joanie is listed as the mother on Charlotte’s birth certificate. The father isn’t listed. She was born at Truman Medical Center. I’m going to subpoena the hospital’s records to see if there’s anything in them about the father and who paid the bill.”
“Lean on them like you did with Fresh Start. I wonder why Bethany told me that Charlotte was her daughter.”
“Probably because she’s the one that was raising her.”
“Okay, but here’s something else that doesn’t make sense. Bethany also told me that she didn’t know who paid for Joanie’s treatment at Fresh Start. Since Judge Steele’s foundation paid for it, Joanie would have had to jump through who knows how many hoops to get that free ride. There’s no way Bethany couldn’t have known about that.”
“And then there’s the money, the five thousand dollars. Where’s Bethany or Joanie gonna get that kind of money? Maybe it’s all tied together. Maybe they were blackmailing the judge and he was using his foundation to pay her off. We’d have to subpoena the foundation’s records to trace the five grand.”
“Yeah, and you can bet Steele would fight that subpoena to the death, and without more proof, Judge West will quash it.” Alex looked at her watch. “Bethany has to be at work in about an hour. If I leave now, I can catch her and get some answers.”
“I thought you were sick.”
“Not that sick. Get that subpoena over to Truman and ask Bonnie to help you cut through the red tape.”
**
Alex was relieved when she saw Bethany’s Impala parked in front of her trailer. She climbed the single step to the open door. The lights were off, strands of daylight leaking through the lowered blinds on the trailer’s windows, casting shadows and stirring dust mites. The television was playing in the background, Meredith Vieira asking Who wants to be a millionaire? Bethany was slumped over the dinette table as if she was dozing. Alex called to her.
“Bethany.”
When she didn’t wake up, Alex rapped on the side of the trailer.
“Bethany!”
Then Alex caught the rank, sickly-sweet scent of decomposing flesh and knew that Bethany was dead. She stepped inside. Charlotte wasn’t there. Back outside, she flung open the door to the storage shed. Not finding her, she ran around the trailer, shouting.
“Charlotte! Where are you?”
Chapter Fifty
WEDNESDAY MORNING, ROSSI AND Kalena Greene sat in front of the computer on Rossi’s desk playing the airport security video over and over, using freeze-frame and slow motion to break the action down. Kalena drained her cup of coffee and pushed away from the screen.
“This is hopeless,” she said. “If you and I can’t identify Norris in the video, there’s no way a jury can.”
“What about having some video geek enhance it?”
Kalena shrugged. “We can try that, but your twenty-four-hour hold on Norris expired two hours ago. We’ve got to charge him or let him go.”
“So charge him. We know his car was used, and his alibi is for shit.”
“So is our case if we can’t put him in the car. You got a warrant to search his apartment last night and you didn’t find the duffel bag or anything else to link him to the murder. And your canvass of around Barry Road and I-29 didn’t turn up anything.”
“There’s still his daughter Kim. She may have been in on it with him. If Norris thinks we can prove that, he’ll confess if we agree to treat her as a juvenile.”
“What do you have on her?”
“Wheeler talked to Sonia Steele, who was Robin’s best friend. According to Sonia, mother and daughter have fought for years.”
“Fought about what?”
“Whatever moms and teenage daughters fight about, which I guess for them was everything. Things got worse in the last six months or so. Kim started staying out all night and Robin was afraid she’d graduated from smoking dope to using meth. And a few weeks ago, Kim was expelled from school when she was caught with a box cutter in her purse.”
“How did Kim explain the box cutter?”
“She said she was going to use it to cut a bitch.”
“Damn, that white girl went ghetto in a hurry.”
“Not hard when you take the meth express. Sonia said that Robin was trying to get Kim into an alternative high school but that Kim refused to go.”
“Have you gotten into Kim’s computer and phone yet?”
“Wheeler is getting a search warrant for the computer and is going to serve the phone company with a subpoena today.”
“What about the hidden car keys? Any luck with that?”
“The one for the Camry was right where it was supposed to be, but there were no prints. Not even partials, smudges, or swirls. And nothing on the metal box it was kept in.”
“So,” Kalena said, “the killer wiped the key and the box clean, which supports Norris’s story. If he’d been behind the wheel, he’d have used his own key.”
“Unless he used the spare and wiped it clean to make it look like someone stole his car.”
“Which is a theory in search of proof. I hate to say it, but you’ve got to let him go. Whoever did this did a pretty good job of hiding his tracks, but you’ll find him.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Aren’t you sure?”
“You know that I am.”
Kalena grinned. “Then, that’s good enough for me.”
Rossi gave instructions for Norris to be released and headed to the City Diner at Third and Grand, taking a window booth at the back, ordering coffee and telling the waitress to keep his cup full. He needed the caffeine to weed out the cobwebs from the night before and figure out what to do next.
He’d let Bonnie Long get to him, taking it out on a bottle of scotch he’d meant to save for a better occasion. He was halfway through the bottle before he decided he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the lawsuit. The lawyers for the department and the city would tie the case up in knots that would take years to untangle. When he finished the bottle he fell asleep, waking in the middle of the night and looking out the window, seeing the women and children from Bonnie’s patio standing outside, staring at him, then waking a second time, realizing the first time had been a dream.
He’d killed four men in the twenty years he’d been a cop. The department’s shrink had to clear him before letting him return to duty after each shooting, which meant giving him tests to find out how fucked-up he was, never telling him he was too fucked-up to go back. He figured they knew he was lying when he told them the nightmares never lasted more than a week or two and that his drinking wasn’t a problem but looked the other way because they needed a guy like him who wasn’t afraid to put a bad guy down. Their unspoken deal had worked for both sides for a long time.
Stirring his coffee, he chided himself for letting Bonnie Long knock him on his ass. She’d called him out, and for the first time in a long time he had to admit that there wasn’t as much of a difference between him and Alex Stone as he wanted—needed—to believe. They’d both worked the system.
He sipped his coffee. It had gone cold with all the stirring. The waitress came by to freshen it, but he told her, “No, thanks,” and left. It was his day off. If he went back, Mitch Fowler would tell him there was no money in the budget for overtime and to get lost.
He stood in the parking lot, the day cool and crisp for late September. He clasped his hands together behind his neck, stretching the kinks out of his muscles. A day off. What the hell was he going to do with that? He knew the answer. He’d work the case on his own time.
The neighborhood canvass had been a bust. But a lot of those businesses had their own video surveillance systems that might have captured Robin and her killer. The cops doing the canvass hadn’t checked for that.
I-29 and Barry Road was a major intersection in the northland. There were shopping centers on three corners and two motels on the fourth. Continuing west of the intersection, the direction Robin Norris had chosen, there were a couple of churches, a high school, a park, and several residential neighborhoods, after which development thinned out, turning Barry Road into a little-traveled, unlit country lane by the time it reached the curve five miles farther west where Robin had been killed.
Rossi was confident that his basic premise was correct. While there were many different routes to the intersection, because Robin was unfamiliar with the area, she would have used I-29 to bring her to the junction with Barry Road. She placed her last-second call to Alex at ten fifteen p.m. She could have been anywhere on either side of I-29 prior to that. The timeline he had established for her movements had a gap of seven hours from the time she left the office to the time of the phone call. But the most important part of that period was the fifteen to thirty minutes before she called Alex. Something happened in that time frame to send her racing into the unknown darkness.
