The Mourning Sexton

by Michael Baron

  “And sometimes you get blown up.”

  Hirsch took a sip of wine. “But not often.”

  “Not often. Oy.” Rosenbloom gave Dulcie an exasperated look and turned back to Hirsch. “This is no ordinary lawsuit. If he really killed her, now he knows you've discovered a hole in his story. A one-hour hole. He also knows you just might find a forensic pathologist who could raise a genuine issue about the cause of death. You get blown up here, boychik, it'll be no metaphor. They'll need a new gabbai to say Kaddish for the old one.”

  Hirsch smiled and shook his head. “No one's getting blown up yet.” He turned to Dulcie. “What about Missy Shields's e-mails? What did you find?”

  “Let me get our food ready and we can talk over dinner.”

  Hirsch stood. “I'll help.”

  The aromas of garlic and fresh tomatoes and basil and oregano and Parmesan cheese filled her kitchen. A savory tomato sauce bubbled in the pan. Garlic bread warmed in the oven. Spaghetti noodles were churning in the boiling water. She'd omitted the meat from her sauce in deference to his dietary restrictions. Not easy to find kosher Italian sausage, she explained as she chopped anchovies for the Caesar salad. He tested one of the spaghetti strands and then poured the pot of boiling water and noodles into the colander. Shaking out the extra water, he turned out the spaghetti into the serving bowl.

  It felt good to be in a real house again, to be in a real kitchen helping prepare a real homemade dinner. He glanced over at Dulcie, who was scraping the chopped anchovies off the cutting board into the wooden salad bowl. She looked lovely tonight in a navy turtleneck and snug faded jeans.

  From the den came the sound of a televised basketball game.

  “Is your son in there?” he asked.

  She glanced over and nodded. “His name is Ben.”

  Ben was slouched on the couch facing the television. He was leaning against an oversized throw pillow, the remote in hand, staring at the screen, unaware of Hirsch watching from the doorway. The boy was maybe fourteen—slender, on the verge of puberty, still more child than man. Baggy cargo pants, oversized black-and-tan-checked shirt, orange T-shirt beneath, floppy white socks.

  Hirsch glanced at the television screen long enough to take in the teams and game situation—Lakers and Celtics, early in the second quarter, Lakers up by eight. Now ten.

  He waited for a commercial break.

  “You a Celtics fan?”

  Ben turned, surprised to see him standing there. He shrugged. “Not really.”

  “They were good when I was your age.”

  “You like them?”

  “Not really, but I never liked the Lakers, so I guess that makes me a Celtics fan tonight.”

  After a moment, the boy said, “I like Shaq.”

  “Me, too. I'm just tired of them winning every year.”

  The boy smiled. “Like the Yankees, huh?”

  “Tired of them, too.”

  “My mom likes the underdogs.”

  “How 'bout you?”

  “I like the Cardinals. And the Blues.”

  The basketball game resumed. They watched in silence—Ben on the couch, Hirsch leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed over his chest.

  “Do you play basketball?” Hirsch asked during the next break in the action.

  The boy shrugged. “Not very good.”

  He was a cute a kid, this Ben. Big brown eyes, long eyelashes, his mother's strong nose, curly hair.

  Hirsch came around the couch and sat alongside Ben.

  “I'm David,” he said.

  Ben glanced at him and nodded. “Hi.”

  They watched the game side by side, their conversation consisting of random comments on the action:

  “Nice shot.”

  “Why isn't that traveling?”

  “He called that a foul?”

  Just two guys watching a game on the tube. Nothing forced.

  He could hear Rosenbloom and Dulcie talking in the other room. He glanced over at the boy.

  He loved his daughters. Adored them. Still, a boy would have been a nice addition. Someone to teach how to shoot a layup. How to hit a baseball to the opposite field.

  Dulcie poked her head into the den. “Dinner's ready, boys.”

  Ben looked over at Hirsch.

  Hirsch said, “You'll be able to catch the fourth quarter after dinner.”

  The boy pointed the remote at the TV and pressed the Power Off button.

  They didn't talk about the case during dinner, or at least until Ben finished his dinner. Dulcie let him go back to watch the end of the basketball game and told him she'd call him for dessert.

  She'd made a copy of the printed e-mails that Missy Shields had sent Hirsch. She retrieved the copies from her briefcase in the front closet. As she sorted through them she explained that they confirmed Missy's recollections, namely, that Judith had been focused on the names of the people who staffed the executive offices of Peterson Tire. For the most part, the e-mails were queries about the whereabouts of specific Peterson Tire employees mentioned in depositions or shown as recipients on interoffice memoranda. Several e-mails asked Missy's paralegal how to retrieve certain documents from the database. All of her queries seemed to tie back to the identities, job titles, and job descriptions of employees in the executive offices in Knoxville.

  “Someone better start checking the rest of those Knoxville numbers,” Rosenbloom said. “Find out if she ever reached anyone important at headquarters. Find out what the hell she was looking for.”

  “Speaking of telephone numbers,” Dulcie said to Hirsch, “I tried calling her classmates.”

  “Classmates?” Rosenbloom asked.

  Hirsch explained how Dulcie had matched several of the names in Judith's personal papers with actual students who were at Washington University during her undergraduate or law school years.

  “I talked with some,” she said.

  “And?” Rosenbloom asked.

  “Not much. Judith mainly kept in touch by e-mail, usually by way of a short note at the holidays or on their birthdays. One or two remember a phone call on a happy occasion, but mostly it was e-mail. Occasionally she'd forward by e-mail something she thought they'd be interested in—maybe an article she'd found on the Internet, an opinion she'd worked on for McCormick, an essay from an online newspaper, a joke someone had sent. One of her classmates, a girl named Sharon Berger, saved an e-mail Judith sent her after the birth of her first child. I had her forward it to me.” She smiled. “It's classic Judith—warm and thoughtful.”

  “Do you have it here?” Hirsch asked.

  “Back in my study.” Dulcie stood. “I'll bring it out.”

  Rosenbloom gazed at her rear end as she walked down the hall. “My goodness,” he said with appreciation. “You think the professor gives private tutorials?”

  Hirsch flipped through the batch of Judith's e-mails that Missy Shields had sent. Most were brief questions:

  p 58 of pierce depo. witness mentions someone in executive offices named eva. who is she? what else do u have on her? thanks!

  remington depo 218—letter from korte, v/p marketing. typist's initials at bottom read “btr” do u know who that is?

  is there a secretary in exec offices named ruth? last name? u have address?

  And so on.

  He noted her e-mail address: judith_shifrin@moed.uscourts.gov.

  He flipped back through the other e-mails to make sure they all had that address.

  Dulcie returned with the e-mail from Judith to her friend Sharon. She handed it to Hirsch. In it, Judith congratulated her friend on the birth of a little girl, wished her much joy, and ended with a poem Judith described as her favorite blessing for a new baby. The poem was “For the Child” by Fannie Stearns Davis and included the following stanza:

  And you shall run and wander,

  And you shall dream and sing,

  Of brave things and bright things,

  Beyond the swallow's wings.

  He looke
d at the top of the page. Same e-mail address. The time on the e-mail showed that Judith had sent it at 6:52 P.M.

  “She only had the office computer,” Hirsch said.

  “What do you mean?” Rosenbloom asked.

  “There was no computer among her personal belongings. I've looked through her canceled checks and credit card bills. I didn't see any payments to an Internet service provider.” He held up the e-mail he'd just read. “This is clearly personal. She sent it at night from her office e-mail address.”

  “So?” Rosenbloom said. “I only have one computer. So do you.”

  Dulcie said, “What David means is that everything she wrote and every e-mail she sent and every e-mail she received was on that computer.”

  Hirsch said, “And if she was as methodical as you say she was, then whatever she was looking for—”

  “And whatever she found,” Dulcie added.

  “Will be on that computer,” Hirsch said.

  “Unless it was erased,” Rosenbloom said.

  “It's hard to erase anything from a computer,” Dulcie said. “There are data recovery firms that specialize in retrieving deleted files. When it comes to hard drives, nothing's gone forever.”

  “First things first,” Rosenbloom said. “You have to find the computer. She's been gone for more than three years. That means her computer has long since been reassigned to someone else in the courthouse.”

  “Most likely to the next law clerk to occupy her office,” Hirsch said.

  “Even so,” Dulcie said, “you'll need to get access to it to find out what's on the hard drive.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Rosenbloom asked.

  “Russ Jefferson,” Hirsch said.

  Rosenbloom said, “You really think Jefferson is going to stick his neck out like that for you? That guy is strictly by the book.”

  “He might,” Hirsch said. “We used to work together.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  Hirsch shrugged. “It's worth a shot.”

  CHAPTER 17

  When he'd arrived, he paused to stare at the legend over the entrance:

  OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY

  EASTERN DISTRICT OF MISSOURI

  RUSSELL T. JEFFERSON

  UNITED STATES ATTORNEY

  United States Attorney.

  To call it ironic didn't capture the embarrassment and the remorse. Of course, Russ Jefferson was hardly the first person to trigger that brew of emotions, a recurrent feature of his postincarceration life.

  And now, as he sat in Russ Jefferson's large office and watched his former colleague page through the documents he'd given him, he couldn't help think how improbable this meeting would have seemed to both of them back in their days together as assistant U.S. attorneys. They'd joined the same day in June twenty-six years ago. There'd been four rookie AUSAs that year—Hirsch, Jefferson, Gloria Dowd, and the big ex-jock from Mizzou named Brendan McCormick.

  Although none of them had much in common, the contrast between Hirsch and Jefferson had been the most striking. Hirsch the hotshot Harvard grad, Jefferson the unassuming black man who'd gone to night law school at St. Louis University while working days as a claims adjuster for an auto insurer. One smooth and assured, the other awkward; one quick, the other a plodder; one treating the job as a mere stepping-stone, the other as a calling; one taking every opportunity to schmooze his superiors for high-profile cases, the other working late hours on the dregs of the office's criminal docket.

  Back then, Hirsch thought of Jefferson, if he thought of him at all, as a drudge. During the years they worked together in that office, he spoke to Jefferson no more than a dozen times, and rarely longer than a stop at the water-cooler or a ride in the elevator. They had lunch maybe once. It wasn't that he snubbed the black attorney. It was just that Jefferson wasn't relevant to Hirsch's ambitions.

  Russell Jefferson's contemporaries left the U.S. Attorney's Office one by one for lucrative jobs in the private sector or prestigious jobs in government. Hirsch left for a prosecutor gig in the Justice Department's elite antitrust division in Washington, D.C. McCormick left to become county prosecutor. Gloria Dowd left to join the litigation department of Chicago's Kirkland & Ellis. But Jefferson continued to plug away. Gradually, he came to be recognized—first by the other AUSAs, eventually by each succeeding U.S. attorney—as the indispensable member of the staff. Three years ago, the new president opted for merit over politics and appointed Jefferson to the top job.

  And thus, as the farce of Hirsch's life continued unfurling, the man he'd once considered irrelevant was now his best hope. And despite their nonrelationship in the past, and despite whatever snubs Jefferson may have felt from him, Hirsch knew that Jefferson would give him a fair shake. He was, as Hirsch's grandfather would have said, a real mensch.

  Jefferson shook his head. “I have to tell you, David, you have not given this office much to go on.”

  “I'm not asking for a search warrant, Russ. You don't need probable cause to find out who has her computer.”

  “But you want access to that computer as well.”

  “Not to any current files. I'm just looking for data on the hard drive that goes back to when she was alive. You could probably have one of your computer guys download that stuff in an hour. Nothing current. Nothing created by anyone else. Just her stuff.”

  “On what grounds, David? On the basis of a conversation with a retired pathologist who raised a question about the medical examiner's determination of cause of death? I am supposed to seek authority for a search and seizure on that ground?”

  “Not a search and seizure. Forget that aspect. Forget the entire criminal element. Pretend I never mentioned it. Let's assume that this is just an ordinary wrongful death case. And who knows? Maybe that's all it will turn out to be. I still need to give the jury a sense of Judith Shifrin in her final days, if for no other reason than to let them know what she was like. I can't do that by myself. I didn't know her, and what little her father may have known is fading fast. But she happened to be someone who used her computer to keep in touch with friends and loved ones. Access to those files might just give me access to the Judith I need to show the jury.”

  Jefferson tugged at the edge of his thin mustache as he listened. Except for the bald spot on top and the deep lines in his face, he looked the same as he had back in their AUSA days together, right down to his outfit. Jefferson was the antithesis of funky and cool. Hirsch had never seen him in jeans or even khakis. He'd always projected the look of the hardworking, sober African-American prosecutor: close-cropped hair, no sideburns, pencil-thin mustache, starched white shirt, thin tie, dark suit, shiny black wingtips.

  Jefferson drummed the fingers of his right hand on the top of his desk as he studied Hirsch.

  “This is highly irregular, David.”

  “But legal.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Hirsch smiled. “Does that mean you'll do it?”

  “It means that I shall take this one small step at a time. I shall speak with the court administrator. His office should have a record of the whereabouts of the computer in question. Once I obtain that information, I will consider allowing a review of the files contained therein. The older files, that is. Nothing since the time of the young lady's passing.”

  “I really appreciate that, Russ. And if I happen to find anything of interest to your office in those files, I will—”

  “No.” Jefferson held up his hand. “There can be no quid pro quo here, David. You are an officer of the court. If there are materials in those files of a potentially incriminating nature, I shall assume that you will fulfill your professional responsibilities in connection therewith.”

  “Your assumption is correct.”

  Jefferson nodded. “Then I shall be in touch once we locate the computer.”

  Hirsch stood and extended his hand. “Thank you, Russ.”

  Jefferson stood and shook his hand. “Miss Shifrin was a fine young l
ady, David. Diligent and hardworking. Respectful of the office and of her role therein. Although I only had a few occasions to deal with her, I was impressed. I had even mentioned to her that she should consider our office after the conclusion of her clerkship. If anything untoward occurred, well . . .” He paused. “But first things first. Good to see you, David.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Two sentences into the argument, Jack Bellows had revved himself up to Full Smug Mode—face flushed, bushy eyebrows arched, almost sneering as he presented his position to Judge Kalnitz, who was rubbing his goatee while he listened to the argument.

  “Your Honor,” Bellows said, shaking his head in disgust, “Mr. Hirsch's motion is merely another example of his utter disrespect for the rule of law. Even if we assume that this database Mr. Hirsch so ardently seeks is somehow relevant to this lawsuit, which it surely is not, the court that is in charge of that database has entered a protective order stating that no one else can have access to it. My client, the Ford Motor Company, is a party to that case and is bound by the terms of that order. We understand the rule of law, Your Honor, and we respect the rule of law. If Mr. Hirsch did as well, he wouldn't dare attempt this end run around that court's jurisdiction. Instead, he'd go up there and try to present his meritless motion to the court in charge of that database. Instead, he's trying to sneak those documents out through the back door.”

  “That's the Enlow case?” Judge Kalnitz asked, looking through the file.

  “Correct, Your Honor,” Bellows answered. “That was a class action against my client and General Motors in Springfield, Massachusetts. I have a copy of the protective order entered in that case right here.”

  Bellows handed the judge a copy of the four-page order and glanced toward Hirsch with a smirk.

  They were in court this morning on Hirsch's motion to compel Bellows's client to produce an elaborate computer file of information compiled by the plaintiff's expert witness in the Enlow class action. He'd learned of the file through one of the Web sites maintained by plaintiffs' personal injury lawyers specializing in SUV crash cases. Indeed, he'd learned far more about the Enlow case and the protective order than Bellows apparently suspected.