The Judge

by Steve Martini

  She shakes her head, makes a face, and finally shrugs her shoulders.

  This is what has been bothering me.

  “Process of elimination,” I tell her. “There was the killer. Let’s assume he or she dropped it. There was Tony. Let’s assume that he had bigger fish to fry, phone numbers to destroy. He didn’t see it. Perhaps he was too busy with other matters. There was you and me, and we didn’t touch it.”

  “So where did it go?” she says.

  “There was one other person,” I tell her.

  She gives me a look like this doesn’t compute.

  “Kimberly,” I say.

  “The little girl?” Her eyes go wide.

  I nod my head slowly.

  “But she was questioned.”

  “Right, she was. And she said something,” I tell her. “Something that didn’t register immediately, because I was concentrating on other things. It’s been rattling around in my brain for weeks. Kimberly never repeated it on the stand in open court. But that first time, when the lawyers and the judge had her alone in the courtroom, she said it.”

  “What?”

  “I wasn’t sure myself at first whether I heard it or whether I dreamed it, so I ordered a transcript of that earlier hearing, the motion by Kline that the little girl be questioned behind closed doors.”

  I dig this, the transcript, from my briefcase. I had marked it with a highlighter two nights ago and now I read it to Lenore.

  “Listen.” I find my place. “Radovich is questioning her.

  “KIMBERLY: They were really mad.

  “THE JUDGE: Who?

  “KIMBERLY: Mommy.

  “THE JUDGE: Do you know if the other voice was a lady’s voice, like Mommy’s, or was it a man’s?

  “KIMBERLY: I heard Mommy. She was crying.

  “THE JUDGE: Yes. But did you hear the other voice?

  “KIMBERLY: No response.

  “THE JUDGE: Did your mother say anything?

  “KIMBERLY: She said ‘No!’ She was real mad.

  “THE JUDGE: Did you hear a man’s voice?

  “At this point I objected,” I tell Lenore. “There was an exchange between myself and Radovich over his questioning. He was offering suggestions that were not helpful.”

  She looks at me, nods, and smiles, one lawyer to another.

  “He overrules me and then he gets back into it, some questions about where she was and the stuffed bear. Listen.

  “KIMBERLY: Binky was out with Mommy. They both got hurt.

  “THE JUDGE: Binky must be a pretty good friend?

  “KIMBERLY: Binky keeps all my treasures.

  “THE JUDGE: I had a fuzzy little friend when I was your age, too. We were real buddies. I could talk to him about anything. Tell me, Kimberly, did you see how Mommy got hurt that night?”

  Radovich is like most adults who speak to little children; we do not listen. He had walked right over her line, and never even heard what she had said, nor had any of the rest of us in that room that day. She was telling us what she saw. What she got, and where it went.

  “The treasure,” says Lenore.

  “Right. Into the belly of the bear,” I tell her.

  “But. . .”

  “I saw her do it in court, the second time,” I say. “With a button she’d ripped off her dress. She fed it to the bear.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. She put her finger in the bear’s mouth, and when she took it out, the button was gone.”

  “So you think whatever was there that night. . .”

  “Is now inside that bear.”

  “And you want me. . .” She doesn’t finish the thought. “No way,” she says.

  It is a tactical dilemma: what to do concerning my suspicions regarding the bear and what may be contained inside it. The problem is that I have no evidence, nothing sufficient to open the bear in front of the special master. To risk doing so in front of the jury could result in catastrophe if there is nothing inside, or worse, if what it contains incriminates my own client. I do not believe this is so, but I am not foolish enough to take the risk.

  I’m looking at her, wide-eyed and expectant.

  “No way.” There’s a finality to her tone. Conversation over, business done.

  Lenore has been given a ring of keys by her friend the judge. Among them is a master key, issued to every judge in this building and a select number of other officials. It will unlock any of the doors along the outer corridor leading to courtrooms on this floor, and to the clerk’s office near Radovich’s chambers, where the evidence cart is now secured.

  “Tomorrow morning they move it.” I tell her about Radovich’s order to the clerk that the evidence be secured under lock and key during our weeklong break. “Our last chance.”

  “No way.” She repeats this. “We get caught, it’s our ticket.”

  “You didn’t worry about that the night you dragged me to Hall’s apartment.”

  “I was drunk,” she says. “And angry.”

  “You owe me,” I tell her. “For getting me into this. For telling me that Tony wasn’t there that night.”

  “I believed him.”

  “And now? Who do you believe? What do you think happened that night?”

  Her face is a mask of conflicted questions. “I don’t know,” she says.

  “Maybe it’s time we found out.”

  CHAPTER 32

  WE WAIT FOR NEARLY TWO HOURS FOR THINGS TO quiet. A team of janitors have completed their chores on this floor, and a security guard has done his rounds, so that we have now timed his comings and goings.

  The guard rattles the outside door to the courtroom and disappears down the broad public corridor. I can hear the bell as the elevator arrives, then the hushed silence as it whisks him to another floor.

  Lenore and I make for the back door and the private hallway that leads to Radovich’s courtroom. The corridor itself is well-lit, a wall of windows on one side that look out on the street. It is devoid of any furnishings, antiseptic white walls and light vinyl floors punctuated by periodic doors leading into the various courtrooms. Each door is identified by its department number, painted in large green numerals.

  Lenore has given me the keys, so I lead the way. We do not have far to travel. A single complex of rooms separates us from Radovich’s court.

  “Don’t look now, but we’re being watched,” says Lenore.

  “Hmm?”

  “The ceiling.”

  I glance up and see it, a recessed security camera.

  “Smile and talk,” she says. “Just two people working late. Just us little beavers rifling evidence.”

  I have brought along a small flashlight and one of Nikki’s old crochet hooks for this purpose, something with which to deftly probe the belly of the bear. If I find anything I will leave it, recall Kimberly to the stand, and ask specifically what she fed to the bear the night of the murder, laying a foundation for a more thorough examination of the evidence, this time before the jury.

  We pass under the fixed camera which is now aimed in the direction over our heads and behind us. Off screen for the moment, we stop.

  The door to Radovich’s chambers is forty feet down the corridor near another camera in the ceiling.

  “One thing’s for certain,” she says, “we’re going to be on film.”

  “Let’s just hope they’re not watching the screens right now.”

  Either way we will have to chance it.

  “No furtive gestures, look natural,” I tell her. “We have legitimate business, authority to be here,” I say.

  “Fine. If we get caught, you do the talking,” she says.

  “If we get caught, we’ll leave that to our lawyer.”
<
br />   “You really know how to calm a girl’s fears.”

  We close the distance to the door, Lenore talking all the while, a nervous monologue in my ear, so that it’s not necessary for me to respond.

  When we get to the door she is between me and the camera, masking for an instant my action with the keys in the lock. It takes me several tries until I find the right one, then it turns in the cylinder. The door clicks open, and in a breath we are inside; it closes quietly behind us.

  Here it is dimly lit, the only illumination the scant light cast by the red glow of an Exit sign over our heads on the door, and a couple of canister lights left on for security in the outer courtroom.

  I motion for her to take a peek out into the public area. She does it and comes back.

  “All clear.”

  “Is there a separate key for the clerk’s office?” I ask her.

  A stark look from Lenore. We have never considered this.

  “Try the master,” she says.

  What is clear is that we only get one shot. If we have no key we are out of luck. Neither of us has the moxie to jimmy the lock. At the moment my own knees are Jell-O.

  I slide the key soundlessly into the lock and twist. Smooth as silk it turns. The door pops open.

  My heart nearly seizes up. Lead in every vein.

  “Aw, shit.” Lenore actually says this as soon as she sees him.

  In the muted blue light of a computer screen, Coleman Kline stands peering back at us from the center of the room. His feet are braced wide apart, hands coupled behind his back, he’s rocking on his heels like a cop on the beat, waiting for us, the cold frontal assault.

  “Mind telling me what you’re doing here?” he says. The voice of authority, he directs this at Lenore.

  She recoils, gets behind me, whispers up close, reminders that I was going to do the talking.

  “Ah, Mr. Madriani. You’re acting as mouthpiece tonight? And you, Ms. Goya, lost your tongue, have you? Well, that is a first, isn’t it?” He puffs out the shoulders of his suit coat, sucking up authority like a blowfish sucks water, the officious prosecutor with a bone to pick.

  “We might ask you the same thing.” Lenore is the first to find words for this, though she says them from behind me. “What are you doing here?”

  “I have a key,” he says. “Entrusted to me by the county. Where did you get yours?” It’s not exactly an answer, but it’s better than ours if he presses Lenore on the subject.

  All the while my eyes travel up and down him, until on their second trip they reach bottom, at his shoes. Around his feet are small tufts, cottonlike and white with what looks like remnants of frayed wool. On the carpet is a dime and a jelly bean. I scan around his feet with my eyes, and then I see it. Last in, first out: a small, pink, heart-shaped button.

  I stand listening, seemingly mesmerized by his harangue, a dull look on my face, until it settles on me. We are minds on a parallel course, Kline and I. Radovich left instructions to lock up the evidence tomorrow morning. I had never considered the possibility that the killer might come for it himself tonight.

  Kline follows my gaze. He glances down and suddenly sees what I’m looking at. He stops speaking in midsyllable.

  Then it strikes me that his hands are not coupled behind his back. He is holding something.

  “Well, I don’t know about the two of you,” says Lenore, “but if we’re going to stand here and argue I’d like to feel like something other than a lounge lizard. If you don’t mind I’m going to turn on some lights.”

  Before I can stop her, she steps around me toward the light switch that is on the far wall behind Kline.

  “No!” I reach out but it’s too late.

  He is faster than I would have credited, his hand roughly on her shoulder, he spins her in place. Lenore suddenly finds her back braced against his body, Kline’s left arm tight across her chest, his right hand holding a knife, a four-inch blade to her throat. In his left hand are the tattered remnants of Kimberly’s bear, its front slit by the razor-sharp knife. Always the quick study, Kline had acquitted himself well when we barged in on him, taking the offense, bluster and bullshit. He’d nearly talked his way clear.

  Lenore struggles but his grip is firm. He presses the needle-sharp point of the knife to her throat and the fight goes out of her.

  “You have been a real pain in the ass, lady.” He says this to her up close in her ear. “Damn inquisitive mind, asking all the wrong questions. You and Hall behind closed doors. My worst nightmare.”

  I lean forward on my toes, looking for an opening, and he presses the knife more firmly; a drop of blood forms at the tip.

  “Ahh. No. No,” he says. “Nothing personal. I don’t want to hurt her. But if you force me ...”

  “Easy,” I tell him.

  “Back up,” he says.

  I retreat a step.

  “This is stupid,” I tell him. “It’s over.”

  He says nothing but studies me with a look I have not seen before, something between mischief and madness: a whole new side to Kline, like the professional suddenly gone playboy.

  “You’re not going to kill her,” I tell him. “You know it and I know it.”

  “At this point I might consider skinning her to be a good sport. Payback for the aggravation,” he says. “I could mount the hide over my desk.”

  I sidle a few steps sideways, but not enough for him to get past.

  “The evidence.” I nod toward the tattered toy. “Was it a ring?”

  Lenore gives me an expression like this is no time for conversation, the lawyer’s dozen.

  Kline doesn’t answer, his hands full at the moment.

  Then I see them, exposed by his outstretched arms around Lenore, starched linen nearly to the elbows, and punctuating each wrist, engraved with his initials, Kline’s trademark, the gold cuff links.

  “Of course.”

  It is the reason he had to get it back, his engraved initials along with the tool marks, the scratches from the table. I finally understand his obsession with Lenore. When the missing cuff link did not show among the items of evidence, he had to wonder. And when her fingerprint was found on the door it filled in the blank, but with the wrong information. Kline thought that Lenore had found his cuff link.

  “Over further,” he tells me.

  “Where do you think you’re going to go? How far can you run?”

  “What makes you think I have to go anywhere?”

  “What about us?” says Lenore.

  “What about you? Move over,” he tells me.

  I inch a few more steps to one side, but not enough for him to chance it, to step by me.

  “We know about it,” says Lenore.

  “And who’s going to believe you?” he says. “A bitter opponent in a capital case, and a former employee I had to fire for misconduct in office, her fingerprints all over the victim’s front door. Not a lot of credibility in that.”

  Kline is right. Without the incriminating piece of jewelry, we have nothing. With the tool marks, his initials, and Kimberly to identify it as the treasure she gathered that night from the floor near her mother and fed to her bear, Kline had reason for concern.

  “All that has to happen,” he says, “is for this to disappear, and we all go on about our lives.”

  Everyone except Acosta, who, it seems, is expected to take the fall.

  Lenore struggles in his arms. For an instant I think he is going to slice her throat like a melon. But all he manages is to shake what is left of Kimberly’s bear, like a dead carcass that has been gutted. Some of the stuffing from its innards drops to the floor, and with it a few of Kimberly’s treasures, which scatter when they hit.

  He looks, darting, greedy eyes over Lenore’s shoulder.

  There, on
the floor between us, at her feet, glistening in the muted light, is the object of his search. But Kline can’t get it, not without letting go of Lenore. If he does he knows I will jump him.

  He looks at me, then back to the cuff link on the floor.

  “Back up,” he tells me. “Back!”

  I don’t comply.

  “You wanna see her die?”

  I take another step back.

  “More,” he says.

  Another couple of grudging inches, baby steps each one.

  “Get it,” he tells Lenore. “Be easy about it.”

  He nudges her forward with a knee and the knife to her jugular.

  “If I move you’re gonna cut my throat with that thing,” she says.

  “Don’t tempt me,” he tells her. “I’m gonna relax my grip. Try anything and I’ll cut you,” he says. “I mean it.”

  “I don’t doubt you,” she says.

  He releases his grip just a little, his eyes constantly on me. He withdraws the knife a few inches.

  Lenore stoops. She snatches the shiny gold object from the carpet.

  “Give it to me,” he says.

  With her right arm fully extended, grasping the cuff link in her closed fist, she makes a single explosive move.

  “Sure.” Her sharp elbow thrusts back like the push-rod on a locomotive. It catches Kline full force under the ribs. His cough of pain echoes through the room. In the instant that he doubles over, she is clear of him.

  I push her toward the door. She falls on her hands and knees, and I get between them.

  “Go! Go! Get out!”

  As I turn Kline slashes with the knife, catching the sleeve of my coat. Frayed threads and blood mingle but I have no sense of pain. Then an instant later, a burning sensation races through my forearm, finally reaching my brain.

  He draws his arm back for another swipe. I step away, grab a lamp off the desk, and use it to fend off the blow, metal on metal; a third thrust slashes through the lamp shade.

  Lenore is still standing there, seemingly in shock, unwilling to leave me here alone.

  I swing at him with the lamp, catch him on the arm, ripping the lamp’s cord from the outlet.