by John Dunning
“A public defender, in Taos.”
“But here, in Seattle?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Would you like to consult with an attorney here?”
“I don’t see any point in it.”
“You wish to waive that right?”
“Sure…might as well.”
“Do you understand, Miss Rigby, that commencing any legal proceeding without an attorney is a risky and unwise decision?”
“It won’t matter.”
“So you wish to go ahead.”
“Sure. I just want to get it over with.”
“Very well. Mr. Wallace?”
“Yes, Your Honor. All we want to do is get her out of here.”
“I can understand that. Do you have the extradition waiver form?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Thank you. For the record, I am now handing to the prisoner, Eleanor Jane Rigby, the consent form as required by Revised Code of Washington, title ten dash…uh, eighty-nine dash…”
“Uh, oh three oh, Your Honor.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wallace. Will the prisoner please sign where the bailiff indicates?”
“What happens if I don’t sign this?”
“We will hold you here for up to sixty days, New Mexico will make a formal filing of its demand, and there will be a full hearing.”
“And in the end I’ll go back anyway.”
“The court cannot advise you of that, Miss Rigby. That’s what an attorney would do.”
“Where do I sign?…Here?”
“Let the record show that the prisoner is signing the waiver consent form in the presence of the court.”
“And at this time I am tending the document to the court for your signature, Your Honor.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wallace. The prisoner will be remanded to the King County jail, until such time as the New Mexico authorities send someone to escort her back.”
“Your Honor?”
“Was there something else, Mr. Wallace?”
“We’d like to get her out of here tomorrow. We’ve been informed by New Mexico that they can’t send a deputy until at least Tuesday of next week.”
“Is that a particular problem?”
“It’s a potential problem. Today is what?…Thursday. That means she’ll be in our custody five days and nights. I know I don’t have to remind Your Honor about potential problems with young female prisoners. We don’t want another Bender case on our hands.”
“Is there a special reason to think we might have such an incident?”
“I understand this prisoner has a history of suicide attempts.”
“Is that true, Miss Rigby?”
“I wouldn’t call it a history…I cut my wrist once.”
“Your Honor—”
“I understand, Mr. Wallace. Nobody wants a replay of Bender. What do you suggest?”
“We have a man here to take her back.”
“It’s New Mexico’s responsibility. Will Washington be reimbursed for the costs of such a trip?”
“It won’t cost us anything.”
“Tell me about it…gently, please.”
“Shortly after the arrest of the prisoner and her transfer here from East King County, our office was contacted by a Mr. Cliff Janeway of Denver, Colorado, who was sent here to arrest the suspect and escort her back.”
“Sent by whom?”
“An agent of the bail bondsman.”
The judge closed her eyes. “Mr. Wallace, are you seriously asking me to release this young woman in the care of a bounty hunter?”
“He’s not a bounty hunter, Your Honor.”
“Please, then…what is he?”
“He’s a rare-book dealer in Denver. More to the point, he’s a former officer of the Denver Police Department with more than fifteen years experience.”
“Is Mr. Janeway in this court?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She motioned with her hand. “Come.”
I walked down into the arena.
“You are Mr. Cliff Janeway?”
“Yes, I am.”
“And you were engaged, as Mr. Wallace said, to arrest the defendant and return her to New Mexico.”
“Yes.”
“Do you have papers?…Let me see them, please.”
“We’ve checked him out thoroughly, Your Honor. We’ve talked with a Detective Hennessey at the Denver Police, who was his partner for several years, and to a Mr. Steed, who is chief of detectives. Both gentlemen spoke uncompromisingly of his dedication and character.”
“All right, Mr. Wallace, I get the picture. Be quiet a minute and let me read this stuff, will you?”
Silence.
The judge cleared her throat. “Mr. Janeway?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You were hired by a Mr. Slater of Denver, who was representing the Martin Bailbondsmen of Taos, is that correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
She blinked and looked at me through her glasses. “I can’t help wondering, sir, how a police detective becomes a dealer in rare books.”
“He gets very lucky, Your Honor.”
She smiled. “Have you ever done any bounty-hunter work?”
“No, ma’am.”
“This is not something you do for a living?”
“Not at all.”
“How did you come to accept this case?”
“It was offered to me. Mr. Slater didn’t have time to come out of town, and he asked me to come in his place.”
“How did you propose to escort Miss Rigby back to New Mexico?”
“By air.”
She nodded her approval. Just to be sure, she said, “No three-day trips by automobile?”
“No, ma’am.”
“What does New Mexico have to say, Mr. Wallace?”
“Well, naturally they’d love to come get her—you know how those sheriff’s boys love to travel. But they understand our problem too.”
“They have no objection to Mr. Janeway?”
“They’re comfortable with him. One or two of them know him, as a matter of fact.”
“What about you, Miss Rigby? Do you have any objection to being escorted by Mr. Janeway?”
“I don’t care who takes me.”
“We sure don’t want to keep her any longer than we have to, Your Honor.”
“All right. The prisoner is remanded to the custody of the jailer, who will release her to Mr. Janeway upon presentation of the papers and the airline tickets. I hope I’m making myself clear, Mr. Janeway. I’m holding you personally responsible for this prisoner’s safe passage. I’m not interested in any deal you may have made with this…what’s his name?…Slater, in Denver. You baby-sit this one all the way into Taos. Are we clear on that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Next case.”
11
The Rigbys sat in stony silence in the first row of Judge Maria McCoy’s court. Archie Moon sat beside Crystal, directly behind the defendant’s table. The room was nearly empty beyond the second row: there were a couple of legal eagles—people who drift from court to court, endlessly fascinated by the process—and across the aisle sat a young blond woman with a steno pad. I was surprised to find even that much Seattle interest in the plight of a defendant in a legal action thirteen hundred miles removed.
“I shouldn’t even talk to you, you son of a bitch,” Crystal said.
I had found them in the cafeteria, eating sand-wiches out of a vending machine, and I sat with them and tried to explain how the deceit had begun, how the lie kept growing until the appearance of the cops put an end to it. We got past it quickly. It was my intent they now embraced, and they gripped my hand with the desperation of shipwreck survivors who come upon a lifeboat in choppy, hostile waters. I told them what was going to happen and what I was going to try to do. I would ferry Eleanor into Taos, meet with her lawyer, and see if any mitigating circumstances might be uncovered that would sway the court toward lenie
ncy. There had been a time, not too long ago, when I had done such work for a living, and I had been good at it. But I hadn’t even heard Eleanor’s side of things yet, so I didn’t know what was possible.
“I’ve got to tell you,” Crystal said, “we don’t have any money to pay you. None at all.”
“Call it one I owe you. If I can help in any way, it’ll be my pleasure.”
Crystal asked if she should try to come to New Mexico. I told her not yet: let me get my feet on the ground and see how the wind was blowing. Gaston Rigby watched us talk, his sad and weary eyes moving from her face to mine. “If it does become a question of money,” he said, “you let us know, we’ll get it somehow.” Archie Moon said he had a little money put aside, enough to get him to Taos if I thought he could do any good. I told him to keep that thought on the back burner and I’d let him know.
Then there was nothing more for them to do but take the long ride home, face a house that would never again seem so empty, and wait out the days and weeks and months for the justice system to do what it would. For me the case had taken on a kind of inevitable flow. Everything about it felt orchestrated, as if my part in it had been preordained. A woman named Joy Bender had killed herself in the Seattle jailhouse and had named me her chief beneficiary. The Bender case was an ugly one, full of posthumous rape-and-abuse charges. A letter had been left with Bender’s mother, who had released it to the press with a raging broadside at the system. In time the Bender letter had been discredited as the work of a sick and angry mind. The mother had written it herself, but the headlines were a cop’s worst nightmare for a month. Even now there was widespread public belief that the true facts had been covered up and the mother was being framed to clear the real villains, the jailers and the cops. Things like that do happen, often enough that people retain their disbelief when a case against the cops collapses like a house of cards. So the DA was primed and ready when I walked in and made a case that sounded halfway legit. When I mentioned in passing my real concern that Rigby might harm herself, he was all ears. When I told him she had already tried it once, this hardened man who had seen everything shivered and drew in his wagons. And the overworked and bludgeoned system in Seattle had bent a rule or two and sent New Mexico’s problem packing with the fastest reliable messenger—me.
I was still sitting at the table in the cafeteria when a shadow passed over my left shoulder, too close to be moving on by. I looked up and into the face of the young blond woman I had seen taking notes in the courtroom earlier.
“Mr. Janeway.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Trish Aandahl, Seattle Times .”
I gave her a long, wary look. “This must be a slow news day. I didn’t think major metropolitan dailies bothered with simple extradition hearings.”
“Nothing about this case is simple, and everything about it interests me. May I sit down?”
She did, without waiting for the invitation. The steno pad was still clutched tight in her left hand.
“Listen,” I said. “Before you draw that Bic out of the holster, I don’t want to be interviewed, I’ve got nothing to say.”
“May I just ask a couple of questions?”
“You can ask anything you want, but I’m not going to let you put me in print saying something dumb. The fact is, I don’t know anything about this case that could possibly be worth your time. And I learned a long time ago that when you don’t know anything, the last guy, or gal, you want to see is a reporter.”
“You’ve been burned.”
“Basted, baked, and broiled. There was a time when Blackened Janeway was the main lunch course at the Denver Press Club.”
She smiled, with just the right touch of regret. She was good, I thought, and that made her dangerous. She made you want to apologize for not being her sacrificial lamb.
“I’m not a hard-ass,” I said by way of apology. “I like the press. Most of the reporters I know are fine people, great drinking buddies. I even read newspapers once in a while. But I’ve lived long enough to know how your game works.”
“How does it work?”
“If you quote me accurately, your obligation ends right there, even if I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. My viewpoint gets run through your filter system and I wind up holding the bag.”
She flashed a bitter little smile and I took a second, deeper look at her. She was one of those not-quite-rare but uncommon women, a brown-eyed blonde, like the wonderful Irene in Galsworthy’s sadly neglected Forsyte Saga . Her hair was the color of wheat in September. Her face was pleasantly round without being cherubic: her mouth was full. She was in her thirties, about Rita’s age, not beautiful but striking, a face carved by a craftsman who had his own ideas of what beauty was.
Belatedly I recognized her name. “You wrote the book: the Grayson biography.”
“I wrote the book,” she confessed.
“I should be asking you the questions. You probably know more than I do.”
“That may be. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“I keep telling you, I don’t know anything. I’m just a friend of the court, delivering a prisoner back to the bar.”
“Right,” she said with a tweak of sarcastic skepticism. She opened her purse and dropped the steno pad inside it. “Off the record.”
“Everything I’ve got to say I said on the record in open court.”
“You didn’t say why you’re really here and what you’re doing.”
“It’s irrelevant. I’m irrelevant, that’s what you need to understand.”
“Who is Slater?”
“You’re not listening to me.”
“There’s someone else involved in this. Slater’s not just working for a Taos bonding company.”
I shrugged and looked at a crack in the ceiling.
“I made some calls after the hearing. You left deep footprints in Denver.”
“That’s what they said about King Kong. On him it was a compliment. As a gorilla he was hard to beat.”
I waited but she missed her cue.
“You were supposed to say, ‘That gives you a goal to shoot for.’ If we’re going to play Wits, the new Parker Brothers game, you’ve got to be sharp.”
She gave me a look of interested amusement.
“We’ll put it down to midafternoon sag,” I said.
“You are a handful, aren’t you? My sources in Denver didn’t exaggerate much.”
“So who are these people and what are they saying about me?”
“Who they are isn’t important. They told me what anybody could get with a few phone calls and a friend or two where it counts.”
“Read it back to me. Let’s see how good you are.”
“You were with DPD almost fifteen years. Exemplary record, actually outstanding until that caper a while back. You have a fine-tuned but romantic sense of justice. It should always work, the good guys should always win. Then the end would never have to justify the means, a cop could always work within the rules and evil would always take the big fall. How am I doing so far?”
“You must be on the right track, you’re starting to annoy me.”
“You asked for it. Shall I go on?”
“You mean there’s more?”
“You have an intense dislike of oppressive procedure. It galled you when the courts let creeps and thugs walk on technicalities. You nailed a guy one time on an end run that cops in Denver still talk about…probably illegal but they never stuck you with it. So the guy went up.”
“He was a serial rapist, for Christ’s sake. He got what he needed.”
“You’re getting annoyed all over again, aren’t you? They told me you would. That case still bothers you, it’s the one time you really stepped over the line and let the end justify the means. Your fellow cops remember it with a good deal of admiration, but it rankles you to this day, the way you had to get that guy.”
“I sleep just fine. My only regret is that I didn’t get the son of a bitch
a year earlier, before he started using the knife.”
“You’re a guy out of time, Janeway. You were a good cop, but you’d‘ve been great fifty years ago, when there weren’t any rules.”
“There’s probably a lot I’d appreciate about life fifty years ago.”
“You don’t like telephones, television, or computers. I’ll bet Call Waiting drives you crazy.”
“People who load up their lives with crap like that have an inflated sense of their own importance. You might not believe this, but I’ve never missed an important phone call.”
“I do believe it. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.”
“If it’s that important, they always call back.” I looked at her hard. “You really are getting on my nerves.”
“Good. If I can’t get you to talk to me, at least I can ruin your day. If I tell you enough about yourself, maybe you’ll understand something.”
“And what is that?”
“If you don’t talk to me, somebody else will.”
“I can’t help what other people tell you.”
“They tell me you’ve got this code you live by and you’ve got it down pat. You see a lot of things in black and white: if you give your word, people can take it to the bank. The problem is, you expect the same thing out of others. You tend to be hard and unforgiving when someone breaks the code. When you come up against a brick wall, your tendency is to go right on through it. You had little finesse when it came to official policy and no patience with politics.”
“I can’t think of anything offhand that’s as evil as politics. It turns good men into bad all the time.”
“You spend a lot of your time alone. You trust no one in a pinch as much as you do your own self. You’ve got such self-confidence that sometimes it strikes others as arrogance. Your reputation as a smart-ass is as high as the Rockies. Richly deserved would be my guess.“
“I work on it every day. I hire four people to sit on a panel, test me once a week, and tell me how I’m doing. Lately I’ve been unable to afford the sex therapist, but you could probably tell that. I don’t feel that my day’s properly under way unless I’ve run three miles and verbally abused someone of far less mental dexterity than myself—preferably in public, where the scars of their humiliation will be shattering and damn near impossible to shake off.”
