by David R. Dow
According to his official biography, Leonard Stream graduated from Texas Lutheran with a degree in marketing. He played on the professional golf circuit for two years before starting a series of business ventures. He later attended law school at Baylor. Upon graduation, he went to work in the energy sector. A year before Moss was elected, the governor tapped Stream to fill a vacancy on the court when its senior member died.
My web search of Judge Stream was more fruitful. He started his business career operating fast-food franchises. A childhood friend of the governor, he bought, with the governor’s financial backing, an established boot-manufacturing business, but the company declared bankruptcy after it was raided by immigration officials who determined that eighteen of the twenty-one employees were in the US illegally. Stream and his partner paid a fine for violating federal regulations but did not face criminal charges. Stream has an estranged son from his first marriage to a beauty contestant from Midland. Stream’s second wife, a Dallas socialite, accused him of physical and psychological abuse in a high-profile divorce shortly after he was appointed to the court, but in the following election, Stream easily won reelection over a Green Party candidate. He is now single, and rumors occasionally surface that he is secretly gay.
To all outward appearances, Stream and Moss were nothing more than professional colleagues who voted the same way more than ninety-nine percent of the time. Both were regularly endorsed by police unions and prosecutors for their tough-on-crime decisions. In nearly one hundred cases that had come before them, including mine, neither Stream nor Moss had ever voted in favor of a death row inmate. What Moss had written about me—that I was a vile murderer who sacrificed one of God’s most beautiful creatures to my selfish and rapacious desires—she had also said, using the exact same language, of at least three black men whose female victims had been white.
Her hostility to science might have even exceeded her indifference to the Constitution. In one famous case that was broken by the Brazos County newspaper crime reporter and subsequently picked up by the national media, newly tested DNA evidence conclusively showed that a woman who had been raped and murdered could not have been raped by the man convicted of the crime. Moss voted against him anyway, speculating the man convicted of the crime might have worn a condom during the attack and laced the woman’s vagina with someone else’s semen to throw investigators off track. Stream joined her opinion, but a federal court intervened and granted the inmate relief. Neither Stream nor Moss had drawn an opponent in either the primary or general election for the past eight years.
But you can learn more on the ground than you can online. So I told the staff at the diner I’d be gone for two weeks, visiting national parks in Nevada and Utah. Instead, I checked the contents of the backpack in Tieresse’s plane, bought a car charger I could use for all the devices, and took off for the Texas Hill Country. I flew to a small airport south of San Antonio with no control tower, a potholed asphalt runway, and a rutty grass strip. Circling above the field at nine hundred feet to check out the wind sock, I thought the place looked deserted. According to an aviation website, the number of weekly arrivals and departures was zero, and there were no planes based at the field. I parked beside an empty hangar with a rusty padlock hanging from the open door. I planned to ride my bike to a used-car lot nearby and find something indistinguishable, but on the way there I spotted an old Ford pickup with a pop-up camper and a For Sale sign in the window parked on the side of a winding road. I pedaled up the unpaved driveway of a small ten-acre farm with two-foot-high alfalfa ready to be mowed. A potbellied man wearing denim overalls told me the truck had belonged to his elderly father who hadn’t driven it for years. The truck was untitled, but the inspection sticker and license plates were current, and I bought it for fifteen hundred dollars in cash. The farmer threw in a case of oil. I tossed my bike into the bed and drove back to the field where I had landed and dialed a number off a sign I was pretty sure was not a working line. I was mistaken. My call was answered by the manager of a twenty-thousand-acre cattle ranch that dated back to the days when Texas was a republic. Until two years ago, the manager told me, the airport where I’d landed had been used by crop dusters, but it was abandoned when the ranch constructed a larger field capable of accommodating private jets ten miles to the north. I told the manager this one worked fine for me. He said, You ain’t gonna be runnin’ no drugs or wetbacks outta the place, are ya? I said, No, sir, just looking for a bit of solitude to lick my wounds after a nasty divorce. He gave me a grunt of sympathy and a PO box where I could send the rent. I leased a hangar for a year for the price of a fancy meal and paid for it in advance. Even with the plane, the truck, the camper, and a few pieces of old furniture inside, it had room to spare. I took a spiral notebook out of the backpack and wrote at the top of page one: Things That Could Go Wrong. On the first line I wrote, Ranch manager? The manager hadn’t even asked my name, but it’s the risks you don’t notice that you most need to fear.
Keeping the speedometer needle five miles per hour below the limit, it took me less than an hour to drive to downtown Austin. I parked near the capitol and walked over to the courthouse. The entrance was set up like airport security. I took off my shoes and placed my phone in a tray. Nobody knew who I was. I sat down in the courtroom and watched the attorneys argue about whether the state’s system for funding schools discriminated against the poor, and marveled yet again at how lawyers and judges can debate a question every reasonable person knows is undebatable. I left in the middle of the next argument, which had to do with whether a man who shot a woman in the leg could be charged with murder when the woman died three years later from an infection a doctor attributed to the wound. At dusk I walked to a fancy hotel and had a beer and a hamburger at a rooftop bar. Nobody recognized me there, either.
I slept that night at my hangar, inside a sleeping bag resting in the bed of the truck, and I returned to Austin the next day at dawn. Over time I would learn the judges were creatures of habit, and their daily routines barely varied from what I observed on that initial scouting trip. Both drove themselves to the office. Stream alternated between a Porsche convertible and a Chevy SUV. Moss drove a BMW sedan. Their license plates identified them as judges. Most nights the local police left an empty cruiser parked at the curb outside each of their homes, and occasionally an officer would follow them to work in the morning.
Moss drove straight to the office and arrived at the court around nine thirty. Stream stopped every morning at a donut shop with a drive-through, but he always got out of his car and went inside. They left the courthouse for lunch around twelve thirty, but while Moss went to the same high-end restaurant every day and had a Caesar salad with grilled chicken and a single glass of wine, Stream usually picked up a meatball or salami sub and carried it back to his desk. They were never together, at least not that I saw, except in the world I was building. They left the office punctually at five. Stream would stop on his way home at a bar on Congress, stay for an hour or two, and pick up Chinese food, barbeque, or pizza on his way home. On Friday evenings, he often had guests. They always left before midnight. Twice a week he shopped for groceries. At the store, nobody seemed to know who he was. Once he made it home for dinner, he rarely left again before morning.
Moss’s habits were a bit more varied. She and her husband went out every two or three nights, sometimes to an event or party, and other times to a quiet restaurant. Either he or someone else must have done the shopping, because I never saw Moss enter a grocery store. On weekends, she sometimes went to the mall and stayed all day. She did not go with her husband to church. Instead, on Sunday mornings, she went to a country club where she spent an hour on the driving range and then met three other women for a champagne brunch. The tuxedoed maître d’ who guided them to their table always greeted her as Judge.
Although I had unhitched the camper from the truck and left it in the hangar, I still worried the old pickup might attract notice. So during my
second week of reconnoitering, I bought a second vehicle, a low-mileage Lexus I found at an estate sale in Boerne. I paid for it with a cashier’s check. The son of the previous owner signed over the title to me, and I put it in the glove box, where, as far as I know, it remains to this day. In my notebook of things that could go wrong, I wrote, If I get pulled over, why am I here?
When I got back to Kansas, I threw the notebook away. Trusting my imperfect memory seemed less risky than keeping a record of my concerns. At the diner I showed off my pictures of Arches and Zion National Parks and made a point of saying they were so vast and alluring, I intended to go back soon. Sitting at breakfast I made a mental list of items I kept in my cell while I was on death row and a separate list of items that were given to me each day. That afternoon I bought everything I needed at a local department store. In the razor aisle I paused. What if my prisoners despaired and tried to kill themselves, or worse, one tried to kill the other? During my time inside, one guy hanged himself and one overdosed on drugs, but no one succeeded in committing suicide with a disposable razor, so I bought a pack of twenty. I’d give them a new blade each week, after I made sure to recover the old one. If, despite my precautions, either nevertheless succeeded in killing him- or herself, I doubted I would lose much sleep, but the logistics of recovering and disposing of the body might be challenging. On Wednesday and Wednesday night I gave the prison another test run, making sure the amenities functioned and trying everything I could to break myself out. First thing Thursday morning I flew back to Texas.
Once I had landed and was inside the hangar, I removed the faux leather backpack from the luggage compartment of the plane and spread its contents on a plywood worktable the previous occupant had left behind. I created passwords to unlock the computer and the tablet: IheartSarah and LeonardIheart, respectively. They’re maudlin, but they’re easy to remember and, I hoped, easy for the authorities to hack. Just in case, though, I wrote the passwords on pieces of tape I stuck to the bottom of each machine. I used two different pens, two types of tape, and different handwriting for each reminder. I also created two e-mail accounts: one for JudgeMossTexas, and another for JudgeStreamTexas. The passwords for each were the same as for the computer and tablet. I made a note to get additional SIM cards for my own phone and dispose of the card I used on my trips to Austin once my mission was under way.
That evening, as Sixth Street in Austin was coming to life, I packed up all the electronic gear and drove the Lexus to the neighborhood in Round Rock where Judge Stream now lived. I parked three doors down from his town house and powered up the laptop computer. I was wearing a Keep Austin Weird sweatshirt and a baseball cap with a Texas flag. If anybody asked me what I was doing, I intended to say I was new in town and trying to find venue information about where I could hear a local band.
But nobody paid me any mind as I sat in my car and tapped the keys. Although I very much wanted to tell Reinhardt what I was planning and doing, for both our sakes, I didn’t. I did, however, need his expertise. Earlier that year I spent half a day at his house in Princeton getting educated about cybersecurity. Most of the questions I asked were innocuous, but one apparently struck him as more dangerous, and he wondered why I needed to know. I said, It’s better if I don’t say. He nodded, and he didn’t ask again. He knew I was hiding something, but by then, he trusted me completely. As I was leaving, he said, If you need anything else, let me know, okay? And be careful.
Sitting in the Lexus near Stream’s house, it took me five minutes to hack my way into his wireless router. Reinhardt would have been proud. I logged on to the e-mail account I had created for him and composed an e-mail: Testing one two three. Please acknowledge. I pushed send, closed my eyes for a moment, then headed to the high-end neighborhood Judge Moss lived in overlooking Lake Travis. It took me a bit longer to break into her network. Using the tablet, I logged on to her account. I wrote: Message received loud and clear. I’m expecting a little more ardor next time, however
I went back to Stream’s block. I wrote a second e-mail: Excellent! Can you get away this weekend? I know a charming B and B on the coast. (Does this meet her honor’s expectations?) I had one last e-mail to write, a reply from Judge Moss. She answered: It does indeed, and that sounds perfect. Other than preaching to his flock, he will be playing golf all weekend and probably won’t even realize I’m gone. Room service for lunch tomorrow at our usual spot? I signed it with a winking smiley face emoji. I tried to think of what might go wrong, which notes seemed false, but nothing stuck out to me. I was good at this. Either I was a natural, or prison had affected me more than I realized. I shut everything down.
It was a cool, cloudless night. I got out of my car to put all the electronics in the trunk and to stretch my legs. Three bearded men were playing mariachi under a gazebo in a park across the street from the bus station, and I noticed my foot tapping out their rhythm. I bought shredded chicken tamales, frijoles, and two bottles of Carta Blanca at a taco stand on South Lamar and carried it back with me to the hangar as the aroma filled the car. I sat outside in a folding chair and studied the stars. My leg was shaking, and the eager anticipation I felt at that moment I had experienced only twice before: the night La Ventana opened its doors, and the day Tieresse and I became husband and wife. With half my second beer still left in the bottle, I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. When I woke at sunrise, I was completely refreshed.
I drove the Lexus to a parking lot catty-corner from the courthouse and backed into a space so I was facing the street. I used Stream’s Motorola to call Moss’s Nokia and had a two-minute conversation with myself. Then I sent a text saying, Nice to hear your voice, handsome. I’m running ten minutes late. Don’t get started without me. I signed it with the same winking emoji, then I texted back, You’re getting me so hot I’m not sure I can walk to the hotel. I might have to crawl
For the next eleven months, I flew south each Thursday evening, drove from my hangar to Austin, and sent a text or two that day and an e-mail or two at night. I avoided toll roads and convenience stores with cameras. I wore a cowboy hat or a baseball cap with the brim pulled low. I’d leave Austin after midnight and go somewhere out of state, where I could charge a meal or a hotel room to my credit card, all part of my quest to explore the small towns of the Southwest—and leave a paper trail of my travels no place near the scene of the future crime. On my way back home to Kansas on Sunday, I’d make a quick detour to my hangar and drive again to Austin, where I would impersonate Moss and Stream one more time. Occasionally Moss would express concern her husband was growing suspicious and apologize for backing out of a scheduled weekend tryst. Stream always told her not to worry about it, that the most important thing was to be discreet. They were careful to describe their assignations in general terms—they’d talk about going to a hotel, or the beach, or the hill country—but never in a way that would allow their movements to be traced. Their caution ensured that investigators would not be able to interview any motel or restaurant employees about whether or when they had seen the amorous couple. Her e-mails and texts were flirtatious and coy, his were salacious and sometimes lewd. Scrolling through them, I felt like a sculptor who can see the shape hidden in the stone before he picks up his chisel.
Their Honors did not know it, of course, nobody did, but Judge Moss and Judge Stream were now having a digitally demonstrable torrid affair, and a pretty sordid one at that. I had created an excuse for them to be together
and therefore a reason for them to disappear together. And I had a place to put them once they did. What I did not have, though, was any idea how I’d get them there.
* * *
• • •
And then I got lucky.
I had flown back to Texas so that the lovers could exchange a few e-mails and texts and reminisce about their weekend tryst at a West Texas B and B. It was Saturday morning. I was sitting in the Lexus outside his condo sipping coffee, writing something steamy and ridiculous about how great the sex in the back seat of his car had been as tractor-trailers rattled past them in a rest stop off I-10. I was trying to think of a better phrase than take you, when Stream got into his Porsche and left. On previous weekends I had tailed him while he ran errands in his SUV. I wasn’t sure there was any more useful information for me to gather, and I was wary of taking unnecessary risks. But on the spur of the moment, I made the decision to follow him.
He put the cloth top down and headed east on Highway 71. In Bastrop he exited in front of a strip center with half a dozen fast-food places, but he did not stop to eat. Instead, he continued on, driving southeast on an empty two-lane road. I put half a mile of distance between us. Ten minutes later he turned. I kept on driving past him as he punched a code into an electronically controlled gate, and I parked on the shoulder two hundred yards down the road. It was a private field with a single runway that looked to be around three thousand feet long. Nobody else was there. Through a pair of binoculars I watched Stream spend ninety minutes doing touch-and-go landings in a high-performance single-engine plane.
