“So, you say you’ve been unemployed for several months.”
“Right. I was pregnant.”
“And how old is your child now?”
“Ten months.”
“Well, let me ask you this . . . when you are working, what is your usual occupation?”
“I’m a dancer.”
Sam couldn’t resist acting like the dork she assumed he was, so he adjusted his reading glasses and asked her with a straight face, “Ballet or tap?”
“I’m a stripper,” she said. “Exotic dancer. I do parties, private homes, and sometimes establishments throughout the Midwest and Rockies. . .”
Sam was tempted to ask if she’d ever sat on his lap in Denver, but he bit his tongue. “Really, how very interesting. . . Are you employed by a particular outfit, or—”
“I’m an independent contractor; I work on a cash-basis only. Sometimes I do escort work.”
The next few minutes consisted of a back-and-forth, Sam trying to figure out what assets she had while she tried to convince him that she didn’t own squat. She was street smart, wary as hell, had no bank accounts, and was paid in cash under the table. He concluded there was nothing he could grab or garnish to get his client’s money back.
Tiring of the game, she finally asked straight out, “How can we take care of this bill?”
“Do you have a cowboy hat?” Sam asked.
“What?”
“Are you allergic to feathers?”
“Are you serious?”
“Look, you owe $1,500. How ’bout you pay $750 and do a lap dance for each of us at the next office Christmas party and we’ll call it good-to-go?”
“I’m out of here, sicko,” she said, and stalked out, slamming the door behind her.
“What was that all about?” Paul’s secretary asked.
“Professional differences,” Sam said.
“So.” Howard shifted on his barstool. “I sentenced a couple to a lifetime of connubial bliss this weekend.”
“Yeah? Anyone I know?” asked Sean O’Hanlon, current president of the Custer Chamber of Commerce and Howard’s long-time drinking buddy.
“I doubt it. This wasn’t exactly your Chamber of Commerce type.”
“So what happened?”
“Well, I got called in at the last minute because the groom was and is a probationer of the judge who was scheduled to preside,” Howard said. “The bride was maybe thirty-eight or forty, and the groom was ten years older or so.”
“Younger woman, huh? So what happened?”
“Well, I had noted on their paperwork that both were from Indiana. Anyway, we get done with the ceremony and they exchanged a lengthy, rather stomach-turning smooch, and I couldn’t help but overhear as the groom gazed deeply into the bride’s eyes and said, ‘I'm so happy your name is Cooper’—which was the guy’s last name—‘again.’”
“Yeah?” said O’Hanlon. “Hey, gimme a second, here’s the waitress.” After ordering them another round, he said, “Continue, yerhonor.”
“Well, I figured maybe they were on their second go-round together, but they didn’t say anything, and I didn’t ask.”
“Hey, none of your business if a guy wants to get back on a horse that has already bucked him off!” exclaimed O’Hanlon.
“True enough. Anyway, the groom says to me, ‘She’s my niece!’”
“His niece? Holy shit, what’d you do?”
“Well, I was thinking it through, and I must’ve looked rather odd, because the guy says to me, ‘No, no—she’s my step-brother’s daughter, so it’s legal, see?’”
“Which is true—right, Judge?”
“Right. The gal says, ‘Bob and I have been in love forever!’”
“What’d you say?”
“Well, I bit the shit outta my tongue, because what I was thinking was along the lines of, ‘No shit. That's exactly what I’m afraid of.’ Instead, I just smiled, and watched as they left, wondering how his being his stepbrother’s new son-in-law will change things during gift exchange next Christmas.”
“I wonder how long it’ll take for the gal to quit calling her new husband ‘Uncle Bob?’” O’Hanlon cackled, raising his glass. “Here’s to you, Judge!”
“You know everyone already thinks we're having an affair,” Veronica said.
“Who? I haven’t been here six months yet.” Sam looked up from his salad. “Hardly anyone even knows me.”
“Everyone,” she said, indicating with her fork the rest of the restaurant. “This is a small town, Sam.”
“You're not married, and neither am I,” Sam said.
“I know.” She picked at her salad. “But still.”
“Well, let’s give ’em something to talk about. Wanna play a little footsie?”
“What are we, fourteen?”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Besides, with this leg that’d be difficult for me. And from what I’ve seen so far, we’d have to be doing the deed right here on this table to draw any serious interest.”
She laughed aloud. “It is a problem.”
“Besides,” he said, “I don't like to eat alone. It's lame.”
“Get a dog, maybe?”
“And I can only eat so many bologna sandwiches in my room per week.”
“I’m one step above bologna?”
“No, you’re one step above the dog; this BLT is one step above bologna.” Sam took another bite of his sandwich. “And don't knock it; I'm buying.”
“I appreciate it. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“It's personal.”
“Okay.”
“How did you lose your leg?” Veronica asked. “I know it’s maybe kinda rude to ask, but there’s lotsa rumors. People talk.”
“I got blown up in Afghanistan.”
“Oh my God! I mean, I kinda knew—”
“Yeah. Not one of my better days.”
“I just don’t know how you deal with it.”
“I’m okay.”
“The rumor is you’ve had some problems.”
Sam swabbed a potato in ketchup, then put it in his mouth and started chewing, looking steadily at Veronica. “I guess I’m trying to figure out what business of yours it is.”
“I like to know who I’m having lunch with. It’s a dangerous world.”
“I’m okay,” he said at last. “I got blown up and then shot. I lost five of my men. But I’m dealing with it.”
“How is the drinking?” In response to his raised eyebrow, she offered, “I heard you might have a problem.”
“People talk?”
She nodded.
“I’m holding on. It’s a day-to-day deal. I don’t want to get too comfortable, but right now I'm doing okay.”
“Good. We’ve had a lot of problems over the years with attorneys coming to court drunk, dealing with their clients drunk, or generally just being drunk. That’s the whole reason they stopped holding the annual County Bar Association Christmas party. I was told it turned into a real shit-show, with the judges leading the way.”
“Really? That surprises me. Judges are usually stuffed shirts.”
“Not in this town.”
“How do you know?”
“I work for one of them,” she said. “I know everything about him.”
“Everything?”
“Almost. Everything I want to know, and a lot I don't want to know.”
“You’ll have to tell me sometime.”
6
Tommy Olsen let himself in the back door using a key Emily Smith had palmed him earlier that evening and dropped it on the kitchen counter. Without turning on the lights, he made his way slowly through the kitchen and into the living area, where Emily sat cross-legged on the couch sipping a cup of something that looked to be iced tea in the light of a Tiffany lamp. Tommy knew Tiffany lamps. He’d stolen a couple of them when he was a kid and sold them to buy beer.
Everyone in town knew Emily Smith was a local attorney—her ads an
d billboards were everywhere. But what they didn’t know was that, since yesterday, she'd been his lover. As far as he knew, only he and Emily were in on that one.
He’d come back from Afghanistan a hero five years prior, but with a little more iron and lead in his body than was biologically necessary, and the physical and mental scars to go with it. As time passed, his physical wounds had healed, but he had some other “issues,” as his wife Becky called them, that he’d yet to deal with. When he flat refused to do so, Becky had packed up the car, piled the kids in, and left for her mother’s. He’d kept calling her until finally she answered, and they’d talked about working things out, but it soon became clear that the bitch had no intention of ever coming back—or even of letting him see the kids—so he had decided to file for divorce.
After he’d gotten out on bail following his second drunk driving bust, he’d met and hired Emily, a local divorce attorney, to swordfight on his behalf with Becky’s bulldog of a lawyer. They’d been working together for a couple of months now; she’d draft a pleading and run it by him for his approval, and then file it. They were an odd pairing—anyone could see that. But at some point—yesterday on the desk in her office, to be specific—the tentative flirtation that had gone on for weeks had somehow turned into something more. He’d gotten back from the shop, cleaned up, and had just barely made it to his appointment—her last of the day, as it turned out. The staff had left soon after he arrived, and the deed was done.
Today was Halloween, and they'd run into each other at a party downtown earlier in the evening. She'd invited him over, so he’d left the party and arrived at the appointed time. She was still wearing her lady of the evening costume. He was dressed as an assassin.
“What are you drinking?” he asked.
“Long Island iced tea.” He loved her voice. Feminine, but somewhat deep for a little gal her size.
“Never heard of it.”
“Vodka, tequila, rum, gin, triple sec, maybe a little coke and sweet and sour—”
“Whoa. I’m not supposed to drink—Doc says it’ll interfere with my meds. But I’ve been known to shoot tequila.”
“I’m in,” she said, moving toward the kitchen—and Tommy. “How about you slice us a lime?”
He watched as she retrieved a knife from the drawer under the cabinet and a lime from the refrigerator, anticipating the heat of the tequila and the contrasting tastes of the salt and lime, and—if he was lucky—maybe a little of Emily, too. He hadn’t shot tequila since a bad night in Juarez some years back. But then, until last night, he hadn’t had sex with anyone other than Becky in a while, either. If he was gonna be single again, he might as well start acting like it.
“Bring it on,” he said, and was slicing the lime when she approached him from behind and goosed him. “Shit!” He turned to show her a deep gash on his forefinger that was already bleeding.
“Jesus, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to, uh, touch you. I didn’t mean—”
“Not your fault. I’m a little jumpy,” he said, and turned on the tap and put pressure on the finger.
“Keep your hand under the running water while I go and get you something,” she said. “Will a small bandage work?”
“Maybe.” He watched the blood leak from the wound into the sink. Seeing the knife on the counter, he placed it in the sink. “Get that out of the way.”
“You’ve got blood all over your shirt,” she said. “You need to soak that, or it will be ruined.” She helped him remove the shirt.
“I might need some stitches.”
“You’re fine, tough guy,” she said. “Now, just hold that in the air for a couple of minutes. Between the pressure and the elevation, it ought to stop pretty quickly.”
“I think I’m ready for a shot of tequila—for medicinal purposes, of course.”
“Of course,” she said.
Much later, when the sun had just begun to illuminate the rim rock and pinnacles that marked Custer’s eastern horizon, Tommy kissed her one last time and left by the back door. What a night. His bleeding had slowed, and aside from a slight headache, he felt better than he had for months.
“Wait until I tell the boys about this one,” he thought, smiling as he started his truck and punched buttons on the satellite radio until he picked up an artist he favored. Blood began to soak through the bandage again, and he decided to run by the emergency room and get the finger looked at before work. Stopping at the intersection a block from Emily’s house, Tommy waited for a fancy foreign job, a cop car, and then a car that looked like Becky’s to proceed. Couldn’t be, he thought. Her lazy ass wouldn’t be out of bed yet. He hit the gas, looked at his watch, and put things in perspective.
“It’s gonna be a good day,” he said aloud, “when you get laid and hear Cody Jinks—all by five-thirty.”
7
“Ms. Knight, why don’t you step up to the podium, if you please?” Howard said. The defendant, a woman of about fifty, slowly made her way to the podium and elaborately placed her chained wrists atop it. “Did you hear and understand your rights?”
“Yes.”
“Any questions?”
“No.”
“Ms. Knight, you’ve been charged with a violation of the terms of your bond. You’ll recall that you appeared in front of me a while back and entered a plea of not guilty to a charge of driving under the influence—fourth or subsequent offense in five years. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“The allegation is that you blew a .42. That means you are alleged to have been driving at an alcohol concentration five times the legal limit, a level that would kill most people,” Howard said. “So, you sat in jail for about thirty days because you couldn’t make the bond I set—$1,500 cash or commercial surety. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Your lawyer asked me to reconsider bond, and I did. I released you after a hearing that started at 4:30 p.m. yesterday with the admonition not to use, consume, or possess alcohol and your agreeing to participate in a daily testing regimen. Remember that?”
“Yes.”
“So, I’ve got a police report here that says you were arrested by the Custer Police at nine p.m. last night on a charge of public intoxication. Says here you wouldn’t leave the library, then you passed out and vomited in the entranceway. Do you understand that?”
“Oh, yeah, that was me.”
“So, do you admit or deny that you used alcohol yesterday evening after getting out of jail?”
“I admit.”
“Ms. Knight, what were you thinking? You weren’t out of jail more than three hours!”
“I was thinking after thirty days in jail I needed to get good and drunk, Your Honor.”
“Well, I appreciate your honesty, Ms. Knight. Unfortunately, you’ve shown me you’re not a good candidate for pre-trial release, so I’m going to reinstate the original terms of your bond and add a little bit to it. You’ll be held in lieu of $2,500 cash or commercial surety. If you do get out. . .” Howard then advised her of the terms of her bond. After the advisal, she had a question.
“Judge, is there any way I can get out again tonight?”
“If you or a bail-bond outfit posts $2,500, yes.”
“And I can’t drink if I get out?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t want out.”
“Well, Ms. Knight. I’m sorry, but I guess I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“The world is an ugly place for a sober woman, Judge.”
Mary Perry was irritated. Judge Daniels had only one more hearing today—a custody matter that could be handled in a few minutes—and everyone was present and ready to go, except for the petitioner’s attorney, Emily Smith. As the judge’s judicial assistant, her job was to keep the docket running smoothly. Plus, it was in her best interests, as delays would not infrequently send him into a fit. Especially of late.
With a District Court judge and a Circuit Court judge holding hearings alm
ost all day long—and with everyone running late some days—it was not uncommon for attorneys to find themselves scheduled for two hearings simultaneously. Generally, when an attorney was a no-show, Mary would simply call their office and get an explanation.
Dorothy Johnson, Ms. Smith’s receptionist, had only said that “Emily was not in,” before—with some prodding—she had explained in confidence that she had no idea where she was.
Daniels was generally unwilling to grant a continuance without being given a valid reason and would usually order someone else from an attorney’s office to appear. But since Ms. Smith was a sole practitioner, there was not a lot anyone could do. Mary would simply have to find another setting to insert for the judge’s four o’clock, lest they waste an hour and get even more backed up than they were already.
Just down the street from the courthouse, Dorothy Johnson, or Dot, as her friends called her, had just about had it with Mary Perry—and her boss, Emily Smith. Before the latest phone call, when Dot finally had to admit she had no idea where Emily was, Mary had called three times to set hearings, check on pleadings, etc. Because Emily kept her own calendar, it wasn’t like Dot could just agree to the setting and be done with it.
This had happened before, Dot recalled. A year or so ago, Emily had disappeared for a couple of days. No warning before she had gone; no explanation afterward. She’d gone to the annual bar convention and simply not returned. No explanation; just didn’t return when all the other lawyers did.
Later, Emily had appeared to listen closely as Dot explained that as her receptionist, she had a right to know where the boss was, et cetera. In response, she got only a muttered apology—and no commitment to ensure it didn’t happen again. Emily was very private and never once discussed her private life. In fact, Dot didn’t even know where Emily was from, whether she had siblings, or anything. What kind of woman was so secretive? Emily was sweet, but she was stubborn, too, and clearly not interested in revealing her past, which only made Dot more determined to find out what Emily was hiding.
Misjudged Page 4