“What then?”
“I think I know someone who will take the baby soon as he...or she...is born.”
“Adoption. I can only imagine how Ellen will feel about that.”
“I think it will be OK with her, Dorothy. I really do.”
The juvenile hearing room here had a modern, sterile glow to it, Loretta noticed. Much cleaner than the one in Seattle, or the ones she’d seen in California, for that matter. And there was no audience of bystanders, interested or otherwise, in spite of the clamor surrounding the case. They had been banned. She’d shoved through the microphones and babbling heads outside the boxy modern new building, with its crown of awkward postmodern pediments; en route she also took note of the dutiful troop of glowering, shrieking pro-lifers close at hand, thankful Ellen was coming straight from the lock-up and wouldn’t have to run any of these sordid all-American gauntlets. And now here she stood, before a baleful-looking male judge, with a half-dozen interested parties at or behind the prosecution’s table. Among them, expressionless, sat Dorothy Longford. Mother and daughter had exchanged the briefest of glances when Ellen came into the room, and Loretta had put her thoughts about that glance aside. Who could know? The only spectators in the room were the two FBI agents and a couple of reporters, chosen to represent the pool. On her side no one but Ellen. The man across the aisle was making a speech. “Given the heinous nature of this crime, Your Honor, and the circumstances of the alleged perpetrator’s disappearance from the scene for an extended period, we move first, that Ellen Longford be tried as an adult for the crime of Murder in the First Degree; and second, that she be held without bail until a decision is reached in the matter. The state contends that the perpetrator’s previous behavior indicates a willingness to flee not only the city and county but the sovereign state of Utah as well, and we strongly believe that given the chance she will do so again. We highly recommend Ellen Longford be denied bail.”
The judge looked at Loretta. “Counselor?” he said.
“Your Honor, may I approach the bench?” she asked.
He waved her forward. The prosecutor joined them. “Your Honor, I strongly urge that you...that all parties to this case would like to...need to attempt a resolution of this situation here and now, today. There are elements that we do...that you will not...I repeat...will not want made public, and...”
“Excuse me, Your Honor,” the prosecutor interrupted. “If Miss...Mrs. Graves is referring to a certain...DVD, I would like to state for the record that we have an electronics engineering expert who has seen this tape, and will testify that it might not be authentic. Therefore I would urge you to...”
Loretta cut in: “Excuse me, Mr. um, I’m sorry, what was your name?”
“Harrison. Look...”
“Mr. Harrison. Your Honor. One of the...I would urge you to see it for yourself, before you start listening to experts. And I would also suggest that the person who has the most to lose—or gain—in this proceeding is Mrs. Dorothy Longford. We should consider what she...”
He held up a hand, stopped Loretta in mid-sentence, then looked over the room and spotted Dorothy Longford. “Let’s go to my chambers,” he said, “And have a look. Bailiff, hand me that,” he added, indicating the box containing the DVD. The lawyers followed him to his office. It looked more like a mid-level corporate exec’s office than a judge’s chambers, Loretta thought.
“Your Honor, before you bother viewing that piece of evidence, I think you should know that Mrs. Longford has indicated she would prefer that the case never be brought to trial, and I’m sure we might be able to work out a plea bargain.”
“Of course that’s what she’d want, Your Honor,” said Harrison. “The accused is her daughter, after all. But that doesn’t change the horrific nature of the crime; nor does it warrant reducing charges on a plea bargain. I’m adamantly opposed to the idea.”
“Regardless of what you think, Mr. Harrison, I have to decide what’s best for the people of this state, and the interests of justice,” said the judge. “Now I don’t know about the value of Mrs. Longford’s opinion here,” he said. “I can’t imagine a person being more conflicted about this situation than she is. What makes you think she doesn’t want to go to trial, counselor?” he asked Loretta.
“I explained to her what is on this tape, Your Honor.” He waited for her to go on. She didn’t.
“And?”
“She told me that...”
“The reliability of this piece of evidence is highly questionable, Your Honor,” Harrison said. “I have an expert who’s seen it, and he says...”
“It seems to me the situation requires that I have a look,” said the judge. He took the video out of the box and stuck it in a DVD player on his shelf. The three of them waited for it to start. Loretta found it hard to watch, especially knowing what would come next, every second.
After it ended the judge looked at the prosecutor Harrison. “And you have an expert who says this is fake? In what respect? Is he in my hearing room? Bring him in here! I want to know what he said!”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. What he said was that it would be possible to stage this—to make something look real that isn’t...that didn’t really happen....” he stopped.
“I don’t think so, Mr. Harrison. Mrs. Graves, what do you want for your client? How can we avoid...”
“Any possibility of this getting out into the world?” Loretta said. “Make up a story. Ellen can be an accessory. A juvenile, a girl forced into something against her will by drugs. You know the drill.”
“Denver. Last week. That guy, what was his name, Percy Means,” said Harrison, who could see where things were headed. “He jumped bail outta Salt Lake a few weeks back, disappeared, and then got shot dead in a bad drug deal in Denver. Whereabouts unaccounted for, at least a week or so.”
“Any reason he couldn’t have come through here, made Ellen crazy with dope, and then done this murder?” asked the judge.
Harrison shook his head. “I’m sure we can make the chronology work,” he said.
“What do you want her to do?” Loretta said. “You know she’s pregnant.”
“So I’ve heard,” said the judge. “But she’s going to have to do some time in...”
“Minimum five years in reform school and then state time,” said Harrison. “Chance for parole in two, if she finishes the school program and...”
“Two years max, parole in one,” Loretta said. “She should turn 18 in the world, not in jail.”
“Mr. Harrison?” asked the judge.
Harrison looked pained. “Under these circumstances, the state can live with that.”
“But what about the baby?” Loretta said again.
“Does she want to keep it?” asked the judge.
“She doesn’t know.”
“I think foster care until she’s out—and then, assuming she is capable, I don’t see why she can’t...”
“And this DVD will disappear completely,” said Harrison. “There will be absolutely no discussion, now or at any time in the future, about what happened.”
“As you might imagine, Ellen and her mother are probably the last people on earth who would want to have the truth known publicly,” Loretta said. “As for the future, well, no one can say. But I don’t know of anyone who would want this kind of information made public. Surely no one in this state would want to have this upstanding martyred Mormon’s reputation posthumously destroyed by...”
“Do I detect a note of sarcasm in your voice, Counselor?” the judge said, a little angrily. “If so, I suggest you can it, right now.”
“Sorry, Your Honor,” Loretta said.
“Fine. Now let’s go back out there and get this done,” the judge said. They followed him back into the hearing room. There he passed his judgements, and soon everybody left the room, Ellen soon to be bound for a girls-only reformatory in an isolated canyon in a desolate corner of the state. Everybody else concerned went out to face the cameras and tell their stori
es. Loretta was on a California-bound plane by two pm that same day. At the airport, without giving it a thought she’d almost bought a ticket for Seattle instead.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MIXED BLESSINGS
Lucy took the two dogs for a long walk in Fay Bainbridge State Park that day, hiking through the woods and then out onto the rocky beach, lined with ancient fallen trees that had been logged decades earlier and somehow or other washed up here. While throwing a stick for the dogs, she considered the state of the world. Or a small piece of it anyway: Utah nagged at her so relentlessly she could hardly think of anything else. Jack Yates occupied a piece of her mental and emotional space; so did the situation in New York, where it appeared that Derek had succeeded in convincing the landlord that it would be best for everybody if he just stopped fighting and gave him a lease. Beyond that, she had given little thought to anything other than the fate of Ellen and her baby.
When it appeared that both dogs were thoroughly worn out, they hiked back to Jack’s car. She let the sandy wet beasts into the back seat of the black Beamer, and off they went, back to Jack’s house. Lucy had moved in pretty much lock, stock, and barrel, meaning everything that she’d managed to drag to Seattle with her. The rest remained for the moment in Portland. The situation had gone on for a few days without a hitch. She hadn’t even contemplated what next. Ellen still took up too much of her time.
She got back to Jack’s pretty little cottage, let the dogs out, grabbed the paper, then headed into the house. Inside she picked up the phone to check for messages, and found that there was one. From Jack. “Did you see the afternoon paper? Check it out then call me ASAP.” She unfolded the newspaper she’d just brought in, and there it was, bottom left on page one:
UTAH MURDER KIDNAP MYSTERY RESOLVED
By Nora Delfino
A surprise ending to the complicated murder/kidnapping/disappearance story we’ve been following for the last week or so has come about back in the land of the Latter Day Saints. Judge Grant William Radford today in a preliminary hearing announced that the teenage girl Ellen Longford will not be tried for any crimes relating to the death of her father, Arthur Longford, in whose murder by stabbing Ellen had emerged as a primary suspect. Nor will any charges be filed against Lucy Ripken, late of New York, now of Seattle and Bainbridge Island, who seemed to play such an important role in the story (and more recently in the life of our favorite aging radical attorney, Tall Jack Yates). According to Judge Radford, Ellen Longford had been “seduced with drugs” by one Percy Means, a thrice-convicted small-time drug dealer in both Utah and Colorado who’d gone AWOL from probation in Salt Lake a few weeks ago, and turned up on the wrong end of a shoot-out in Denver just last week. Mr. Means, he gone and got himself dead. Judge Radford reported that Ellen confessed to having “helped” Means by letting him into her parents’ house and providing him with a knife so that he could then rob Mr. Longford. Instead, Ellen claims he killed her father in a confrontation and abducted her. By the time she escaped Mr. Means’ evil clutches and ended up with Lucy Ripken in a big yellow moving truck headed west, she had heard that there was an APB out on her and so decided to run.
In light of Mr. Means’ (amazingly convenient) death last week, we may never know exactly what went on in that house or that truck. Ellen Longford’s attorney, one Loretta Graves, of San Diego, California, had “no comment,” and we have chosen to leave Miss Longford herself alone. We urge all members of the media to do the same—people, this is just a kid! And so with a manslaughter plea and two years in the kiddie calabozo, young Ms. Longford will we hope learn a serious lesson.
Our prayers are with her, and with her mother and her two little brothers as well. As for talk of shocking DVDs...well, let it remain that, just talk. Good work, Jack, wherever you are.
Lucy immediately called the Tremonton Inn. Loretta had already checked out. She called the county and state offices in Utah, but no one would give her anything. She called San Diego. A girl answered. “Hello.”
“Hi, is this...Candace?”
“Candy. Yeah. Who’s this?”
“Hi Candy. This is...well, your mom told you about her new sister, right?”
“Yeah. Some lady named Lucy.”
“This is Lucy. Aunt Lucy.”
“Wow. Hi. My dad went to the airport to pick Mom up. They should be back pretty soon.”
“Cool. So, how are...how’s it been not havin’ your mom around?”
“OK.”
“Well...that’s good.”
“Yeah, except my dad’s not too...well, he’s used to Mom doin’ stuff.”
“So you have to pick up the slack, right?”
“I guess. So you want Mom to call you or somethin’?”
“Yes, please, Candy. Tell her that I am at Jack’s house, and I need to talk to her as soon as possible.”
“OK. Well, nice talkin’ to you.”
“Can I give you the number?”
“Oh, right. Sure.”
“Got a pen?”
“Uh-huh.”
Lucy gave her Jack’s home phone, then got another dial tone and called Jack. “So what do you think?” she said as soon as she got through.
“Hey, Luce. I think it sounds pretty good. You talk to Loretta?”
“She’s on the way home. I left a message. I tried calling the state agencies and shit but I couldn’t find out where she’s going.”
“I can get that info. But two years in a Utah reformatory ain’t bad, considering. I mean, they run a tight ship out there, but it’ll be a clean, well-lighted place.”
“Right. I just wonder about...”
“The kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m sure someone’s gonna have to deal with it sooner rather than later, right?”
“I know, but...I don’t know what she should do any more, Jack. I...”
“It isn’t your decision, Lucy. You have to let this one play itself out. If you were Loretta, right about now you could say it was in God’s hands.”
“But I’m not, am I? Listen I want to get off the line in case Loretta calls, OK? See you later?”
“Probably be close to seven. You walk the doggettes?”
“Till they dropped. See you tonight, Jackson.” She hung up, read the paper, stared at the phone, turned on the TV news and couldn’t find anything else about Ellen, turned it off and paced. The phone rang half an hour later. “Hello?”
“Hi, Lucy. It’s Loretta.”
“Hey, I saw the news. So how’d it go?”
“Fine. I mean I think we did...given the circumstances...the best we could.”
“How’s Ellen?”
“OK. She’s going to...”
“Some kind of reformatory. Do they know she’s pregnant? What’s she going to do about the baby?”
“I’m not sure. She wasn’t telling me, that’s one thing.” She lowered her voice. “I’m kind of...in trouble down here, Lucy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, its just that Jeffrey...look, I can’t talk now. I’ll call you tomorrow from my office. You going to be at this number? Ellen will be going to her new home tomorrow afternoon. It’s called the Sky Mountain Sanctuary.”
“Sounds pretty enough, doesn’t it?”
“She’ll be there by two. I’m not sure if she’ll be allowed to take any phone calls but you can call to find out how to reach her. Who knows, maybe they have e-mail.”
“Call me here at Jack’s house. And Loretta...whatever happens...know that I’m here for you, if you need anything.”
“Bless you, Lucy. Goodbye now.” She hung up.
Three weeks later Ellen had adjusted well enough to life at Sky Mountain to feel capable of handling a visit from her mother. And so on a warm Sunday morning in July Mrs. Longford left the boys with her mother-in-law and drove up through the mountains to the little valley that contained the reformatory. From a distance the low rise sprawling red brick structure looked like a junior colle
ge or even a high school, the triple strands of barbed wire atop eight foot cyclone fencing not becoming evident until close approach. But there were no guard towers or other appurtenances of prison; just razor-barbed wire atop a cyclone fence. Anyone half-interested in escaping could do so easily, Dorothy thought as she approached the gate in her station wagon.
Ellen had thought little of escape in the weeks since arriving. She had found it pretty easy living there, after her time on the run, even more so after the three years she’d spent accommodating the perversions of her adopted father. She slept through the night but for the occasional bad dream. There were some tough girls here, and a couple of the guards were needlessly cruel, but mostly they left her alone. She had a little room with twin beds she shared with a quiet girl named Elaine who apparently had been sniffing glue since she was 11 and now, at 13, didn’t have much to say. Elaine kept her headphones on almost all the time. They locked them in at night but sometimes forgot to lock the doors; and girls got keys somehow, or figured out how to unlock them with hairpins. Ellen had made one serious friend, a girl named Frannie Fontaine who was, like her, in the first trimester of an unwanted pregnancy. Actually, seventeen of the 62 underage women at the church-run facility were pregnant, and the state provided the inmates with the finest in pre-natal care. Only thing was, Frannie, doing juvey time for possession of marijuana, didn’t have any doubt about what she wanted to do about her baby, since the father was one of three of her older brother’s friends, take your pick, all of them 17 years old to her 14, who had gang-raped her one night after feeding her a handful of downers. Frannie wasn’t sure but she thought her brother might have gotten her too. She had established contacts in the underground network that would lead her, and Ellen too if she wanted it, on a three hour escape off campus, to return mysteriously unpregnant. Frannie had it set up for a moonless night two weeks away. After that her own pregnancy would be too far along to deal with so easily. The time had come.
But Ellen still didn’t know what she wanted to do about the baby. Now her mother was coming, and Ellen, movie buff that she was way back when before this all happened, morbidly replayed that scene from Chinatown in her mind, the one where Jack Nicholson slaps the truth out of Faye Dunaway, “I’m her mother, I’m her sister, mother, sister, mother, sister, mother and sister...” God damn, Ellen, she said to herself, putting on her nicest sweatshirt for Mommy, this is no joke! Poor Mommy. Mommy who let Daddy run amuck on my bones for four years. Well, not her fault, Ellen, not her fault. The dirty old Dad in Chinatown had a lot more evil grandeur than her own creepy little father, Ellen thought. Maybe that was why he got away with it. Ellen thought of her Dad now and then, and even remembered the night she’d killed him. She ran the video in her head. She...well, people have to get over things...that’s what her counselor told her, and she decided she was going to get over daddy. What else could she, would she do? People think these things drag on, drag you down, but sometimes after while they just become like, pictures in your head of what happened, and you look at them, and that’s that. Like from a movie. But then there was this baby, her baby, his baby. Ellen thought maybe Lucy Ripken was the only person in the world who would understand and appreciate the weirdness of the situation. The joke, of letting him come back to haunt her in this way. Ellen had gotten a couple of long letters from Lucy, the past couple of weeks, but she hadn’t felt up to writing back just yet. Lucy sounded happy, out there on the island with the lawyer, and for that Ellen was thankful. She hadn’t ruined things for Lucy after all. Maybe after this visit from Mommy she’d have something to say to Lucy other than “Here I am.” Like, “What should I do about my baby?”
Utah: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 7) Page 26
