“People might think it’s kind of odd to see you there,” Claire said.
“I don’t care.” David looked into Claire’s eyes. “He wasn’t a perfect guy, but as far as I’m concerned, he earned his spot in heaven.”
The chapel, as it turned out, was packed for Sid’s funeral. David noticed Elizabeth Spencer, looking very sad, coming in with a group of her friends. Linda Ames slipped into a pew directly in front of them. As the organ was warming up, Ames shifted around and whispered, “I’m going to be in court this Tuesday on the Kirkwood case, Judge. If you have a minute, I’d like to talk to you afterward about a personal matter.”
People were nodding and smiling to each other as the organ drifted into a muted, high-church rendition of the Rolling Stones hit, “Sympathy for the Devil.” Sid Cranmer would have loved it.
“No problem. Let Ruby know, and she’ll bring you around to chambers.”
Ames’s new case involved the mayor of Kirkwood, a town west of Springfield, who was charged with extorting money from the municipal towing contractor. Norcross was curious how Ames would mount a defense. The government had her client starring in a secretly recorded video clip that was particularly embarrassing. At the payoff, when the government’s cooperator had reached out with the cash, the mayor had looked at the wad of bills and said, in an offended tone, “What? No envelope?”
In court, at the Tuesday conference, Ames asked for ninety days to retain an investigator and to research and prepare pretrial motions.
Judge Norcross was surprised. “Is that much time really necessary?” The mayor needed a lot of help, but this was unusually long.
“I’ll be honest, Your Honor. My son and I are going to Nantucket for the month of July. I’ve rented a place and …”
The assistant U.S. attorney, an African American woman out of Boston, stood. “The government has no objection, Your Honor. In view of …” She looked at Ames and nodded. “In view of everything that’s happened.”
After the conference, Ruby Johnson brought Ames around to chambers. Ames and Norcross shook hands, and Ames took a seat facing the judge across his desk. Before she had a chance to talk, Norcross got up and closed the door for privacy.
As he returned, he said, “Listen, before we get started, I want you to know how sorry I am about Professor Cranmer.”
“It was hard for all of us.”
“It must have been especially hard for you.”
Norcross was puzzled by the cloudy look that came over Ames’s face.
“It’s true that it’s hard.” She looked to the side and shifted in her chair, gathering herself. “It’s hard in complicated ways.”
“Sorry. I’m not following you.”
Ames sat up. “Sid gave up his life to save Ethan and Claire. I’ll never forget him, or stop feeling grateful for that.” She cleared her throat and spoke a little louder, approaching her courtroom voice. “On the other hand, Sid had no business letting Ethan visit him without telling me.”
“I should have thought of that. I can see—”
“And I keep wondering—excuse me for interrupting—I keep wondering if Sid suspected that Jonathan had problems, tried to protect Jonathan for some reason, and ended up putting Ethan in danger.” Ames’s face had turned slightly pink as she spoke. She was twiddling her fingers on the arm of her chair. “If Sid came down from heaven right now, I wouldn’t know whether to hug him or strangle him.”
“I see what you’re saying. Seems a lot of people felt that way about Professor Cranmer.”
“It’s very hard. Ethan’s decided that the whole thing was all his fault, the fault of a ten-year-old who disobeyed his mom.” Ames looked to side and shook her head. “I’m afraid he may even think he should have just done whatever awful thing Jonathan wanted him to do. He’s so sealed up I can’t reach him. That’s why we need the time away.” She took in a deep breath and blew it out. “Sorry. This isn’t why I came here. It’s horrible. Adults fuck up—excuse me, but I can’t think of a better word—and kids pay the price.”
“Take the whole summer if you need it.”
“Thank you. We’ll see.”
It turned out that the main reason Ames had sought out the private conference was that she wanted Norcross to know that she’d decided to stop taking criminal cases. This was very bad news.
“Oh,” Judge Norcross said when he’d heard of Ames’s plans. “Oh, man, I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
Sid Cranmer had retained Ames, paying her out of his own pocket, but Ames was also a mainstay of Norcross’s roster of attorneys who took low-fee appointments for indigent defendants. Losing her would be a heavy blow.
“I’m thinking of doing residential real estate or something. I’ll die of boredom, but at least …”
“Think about it, please, Ms. Ames.”
“Criminal cases just eat you up, Judge. And, with cases like Sid’s, if you have a kid—”
Norcross interrupted. “Okay, none of those for a while.”
Ames talked over him. “I think about your Underwood case, for example. I’m sorry, but I want the guy to be boiled in oil.”
“Well, we’ll leave that. But listen, I’ll give you a break on any new appointments until the fall. Then we can talk again. How about that?”
Ames looked to the side long enough for Norcross to wonder what she was thinking. He made himself hold off saying anything more, giving her time, hoping her natural bent would bring her around.
Finally, she spoke, half to herself. “I am so hungry.”
Judge Norcross quickly pulled open a desk drawer. “I think I have a granola bar somewhere in here. It’s about a hundred years old.”
“I skipped breakfast.”
“We can split it.”
Norcross unwrapped the bar and broke it in half. The two of them chewed in silence for a while, and then Linda Ames sighed and stood up.
“Thanks for the snack. I better be on my way.” They shook hands.
“Think about what I said, will you, please?”
“I will.”
When she was in the doorway, Norcross called after her. “You’re cooking up something in the Kirkwood case that’s going to complicate my life, aren’t you?”
Ames gave him a quick, tight smile and raised her eyebrows. “Hope so.”
52
One afternoon in the beginning of May, two weeks before spring term would be ending, Claire Lindemann ran into Darren Mattoon on the sidewalk outside Converse Hall. It was an unusually warm day, and the quad was exploding with lilacs, tulips, and grape hyacinths. The blossoms made bright borders around the buildings and leaping showers of violet along the edges of the lawns. The campus had never looked better.
Mattoon, by contrast, looked awful—his hair was off center, and his face was gray and unhealthy looking—but he managed a smile when he saw Claire.
“Hello there, kiddo.” He produced his lopsided grin, still unable to resist a flirt. It was sad.
“Hello yourself.” Claire hesitated, worried that a question might be tactless, but decided to go ahead. “So you’ll be leaving us? I was sorry to hear that.” This was not true, but one had to say these things.
“Yes.” Darren’s eyes flickered at her. “Las Vegas made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” He looked down at the pavement. “It’s a good town for a man to try his luck in. And I have close friends there.” He looked at Claire, probing. “None as close as I hoped you might be.”
“Well,” Claire said. “I’m kind of taken.”
“Should have realized that.” He continued briskly. “Our friend Ryan Jaworski is transferring to the University of Chicago. His dad’s on the board of trustees.” Mattoon looked up at the sky unhappily. “They’re giving Ryan pretrial diversion for lying to the FBI. If he behaves himself for a year, I’m told, they won’t charge him with anything.
” He dropped his chin and frowned, looking depressed. “Kids like him always land on their feet.”
Claire refused to conspire in Darren’s despondency, going deliberately upbeat. “Well, there’s good news, too. I’m told Elizabeth Spencer got into Harvard Medical School.” After a pause, Claire decided to ask another sensitive question. It was turning out that she really didn’t like Darren Mattoon very much after all. “How about you? How’s your legal situation?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I didn’t do anything wrong, you know.” He spoke as though he was addressing a dim student. “At a trial, any case against me would depend on Ryan being a credible witness, which obviously he isn’t. According to my lawyer, the U. S. attorney in Boston wants no more to do with any of this.” Darren pressed on, pseudojocular but with a hint of nastiness. “By the way, I was talking to one of our legal studies professors here. He’s positive your judge’s Cranmer ruling would have been reversed.”
“My sources say he’d definitely have been affirmed, but I’m biased.”
Claire was more than ready to go. Darren, however, still seemed to be wrestling with something, not quite prepared to wrap the conversation up, and she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being rude. He wouldn’t be much longer.
“Can I ask you something?” He ran a hand back through his hair, trying unsuccessfully to dab it into shape. “What the hell was really going on with Sid? I still wonder whether he was into …”
“I don’t know.” Claire felt her voice going husky. She still couldn’t talk about it, certainly not with this creep. Now that he was being real, it was worse than when he was phony. “It was complicated, I guess.”
She pulled a Kleenex out of her purse and blew her nose, trying to make it look as though she was stifling a sneeze. She’d never forget Sid forcing the gun down and yelling, “Run!” Never forget the earsplitting crack of the shot, her panic as she grabbed Ethan’s hand and took off, expecting any second to get a bullet in the back. Worst of all, she would never forget squatting in the driveway with David, trying to comfort Ethan, and hearing the sound of Sid’s piercing last scream of pain.
But Darren couldn’t let go of it. “I just don’t get how it all happened.” His eyes looked lost. “It all just seems so …”
Claire’s voice was harder than she intended, but she didn’t care. “No, you don’t.” Then she softened. “Probably none of us ever will. I better go.” She gave Darren a noncontact kiss. She would always remember Sid. Always. But, as for this guy …
“Bye, Darren. I’m meeting David.”
“Good-bye.”
David and Susan O’Leary were visiting the grave of Emily Dickinson a few blocks from the center of Amherst. Susan had suggested combining a walk with their regular check-in about Lindsay and Jordan. She wanted to unkink herself, she said, after her long drive from Boston, and it was a nice, warm day. She was looking especially pretty.
As they strolled down North Pleasant Street, David brought Susan up to date on things. The girls still had good days and bad days, but their basic trajectory was better. Susan had been an incredible help. Soon, after the school year ended, Lindsay and Jordan would be returning to their father in Washington. Ray was back in his office at the Department of Commerce, happily firing people, and the girls’ last couple visits down there had gone reasonably well. Their time in Amherst would soon be over. David was going to survive.
The air in the graveyard had a hallowed feel, carrying a stillness, and Susan took David’s hand. “So, rafiki yangu, pretty soon you won’t be needing me anymore.”
As they stood by Emily’s tombstone, her epitaph, “Called Back,” prompted a smile from Susan.
“Makes her sound like a Volkswagen.”
“Don’t poke fun at our poetess, memsahib. This is sacred ground.” David let go of Susan’s hand. It felt too good.
Susan had parked near Amherst Coffee, which was in the center of town, and as they made their way back from the cemetery, she put her hand on his shoulder. “Can I ask you something? You’ve never, all this time, had me come to your house to meet the girls. I kept suggesting it, but you found an excuse not to every time. We always met up with them in town. It puzzled me.”
“Well, you know, Suze, I didn’t want things to get out of hand.” David said this lightly, as though he were joking. But he wasn’t, and he could tell Susan knew it.
Someone wearing headphones clattered by them on a skateboard; his tune was so loud David caught a few throbbing chords.
After a pause, Susan smiled, almost to herself. “I wouldn’t have minded.”
That stopped the conversation, and they strolled in silence up North Pleasant Street, past the pizza places and other student hangouts. David had a fleeting pang remembering Kenya and the sweetness of his time with Susan so many years ago now.
“Well, you remember the old Nairobi pop song.” He quoted, “Nilikupenda sana …” In Swahili, it meant, “I loved you very much.”
Susan completed the chorus. “Lakini sasa sitaweza.” Translated roughly, it was “but now I will not be able to.” They crossed the town’s main intersection, dominated by two banks, and turned up a side street toward the Amherst Cinema.
Outside the coffee shop next door, they stopped. “Well …” David began.
Claire appeared, coming around the corner, waving and smiling. Susan gave David a quick hug and whispered in his ear, “Kwaheri, bwana.”
“Kwaheri.”
Susan turned, not waiting for Claire to join them, and hurried down the street to where her car was parked. When Claire came up, she gave David a slightly longer than usual kiss. It felt as though she was marking her territory, which was fine with David.
She smiled at him. “I didn’t catch what Dr. O’Leary was saying there. Something in your private language?”
“Kwaheri.” David touched Claire’s face. “It means ‘good-bye’ in Swahili.”
53
The end of David’s life as he had known it arrived on a drizzly school day in late May. The occasion itself was not complicated, just a random interplay of force and fortune weaving their patterns.
As he stood in his pajamas and bathrobe, looking down from his bedroom window, the breeze rocking the hemlocks at the margin of the woods made him wince. Rain blew and clicked on the glass. They’d had a pleasant spate of warm days, and now this. Typical depressing, unpredictable New England weather.
When he went downstairs, he had to shove Marlene out into the yard with his foot to get her to go pee. Hurrying back in, she gave him a wounded look, walked to her bed in the mudroom, and flopped down with a melodramatic sigh.
Jordan was getting the sniffles and had to be called three times before she finally dragged herself out of bed. The coffee took forever. The only energized member of the family was Lindsay. Two of her teammates swung by to collect her early, and she bounced out the door in plenty of time, tossing her knapsack over her shoulder and shouting that she would be home after practice. The softball season was putting her into a good mood.
David breathed into his coffee, letting the steam soothe his eyelids. Seated with him at the kitchen counter, Jordan was working on her Eggo, chewing doggedly. The school bus was due in ten minutes.
On an impulse, David reached over and poked Jordan in the arm. “How about if I drive you to school today? It will give us a little extra time.”
Jordan’s eyes widened. She smiled with her mouth full. “Oh, that would be awesome!”
“We’ll treat ourselves.” David experienced a rush of happiness, despite the weather, buoyed by having winkled a smile out of a six-year-old. When had these girls acquired such power to rescue, or ruin, his day?
A half hour later, they were waiting at the bottom of the circular driveway in front of Crocker Farm Elementary. The rain was coming down harder, and the area was crowded with buses and cars converging from all
directions. David was puzzled at how to manage the congestion. The windshield was steamy, and the wipers were leaving smears.
“You can let me out up there,” Jordan said, nodding and gathering up her book bag. “I can run. Thank you so much!” After hesitating, she leaned over and gave David a quick kiss on the cheek. It left a cool spot and a blank in his brain of astonished joy. Once out of the car, she leaned through the open passenger door and pointed. “If you go that way? You can get out easier.” She gave a little scream—“It’s wet!”—slammed the door, and dashed off, lifting her legs high to avoid splattering.
The terrain between the car and the double doors leading into the school included an expanse of soggy lawn about twenty yards across, terminating in a wide, curving driveway. A hedge of arborvitae about five feet high ran between the right-hand side of the grassy area and the asphalt drive, stopping at the point where Jordan would cross to enter the school.
It was just the ordinary stuff of an ordinary school day. David watched Jordan as she scampered across the wet grass toward the main door of the school. Traffic was flowing along behind the dark green hedge irregularly, partly hidden. First with concern, and then with mounting apprehension, David watched the end of his life unfold.
To his right, a black Camry had stopped about halfway around the curving drive, not quite up to where the hedge began. The driver was leaning across the passenger seat, talking to a woman on the sidewalk. With her back turned like that, the driver of the Camry could not see Jordan, who was running at an angle toward a point at the far end of the hedge where her path would intersect with the curving blacktop drive. After a short interchange, the woman on the sidewalk laughed and waved the Camry on.
The driver sat up and took off with a jerk. Meanwhile, Jordan had broken into a trot across the lawn and into the path of the now swiftly approaching black car. Jordan very obviously did not see the car, which was screened by the arborvitae, coming toward her from the right. It was all happening very quickly and very slowly at the same time.
The One-Eyed Judge Page 40
