Misjudged

by James Chandler

  “Back of the house. Puking.”

  “How long has he been on the force? Thought he’d seen some of this,” mused Punch. “Did he get the scene secured before he started yakking?”

  “Yeah, he got calls into forensics and the EMTs right away and did a sweep of the place to make sure the perp wasn’t still here. I think he was okay until the EMTs got here and started workin’ on her.”

  “Working on her? Wasn’t it obvious?”

  “I guess one of the techs went to check for a pulse and his hand almost went right through her. That’s when Baker lost it the second time.”

  “Well, when he gets done un-swallowing, have him see me.”

  “Roger.”

  Punch looked around at almost a dozen folks, most of whom were in their “bunny suits”—white clothing resembling hospital scrubs, designed to protect the wearer from biological hazards associated with death, especially violent death. “Get a list of everyone in here. Find out who absolutely, positively needs to be here, and who is just here to gawk or have something to talk about tomorrow. Run anyone who doesn’t have a purpose.”

  “Right, boss,” Jensen said.

  “Then get some tape up here and start limiting people’s ability to move around in here. I want everyone coming in and leaving to use the same routes. We can’t let this scene get any more screwed up than it already is—got me?”

  “Got it.”

  Punch turned his attention to the coroner, who was on his knees looking closely at the body. “How long?”

  “Won’t know for sure, but I’d say two days or so,” replied “Doc” Fish, who wasn’t a physician but had been the county’s elected coroner for more than thirty years.

  “So, what—maybe Halloween night?”

  “I’d say that’s maybe about right, but I don’t want to get pinned down yet, Punch,” Doc replied. “Help me up, would you, son?” Punch helped Doc to his feet.

  Punch had come in through the front door and noted no signs of a break-in. Turning to Officer Jensen, he asked, “You check the doors and windows?”

  “You bet. Nothing there, Punch. I’m waiting for the print guys now.”

  “Find the knife?” Punch lifted the sheet to get a look at her injuries.

  “Not yet. Got the boys out back looking as we speak.” Then Jensen added helpfully, “I checked her knife set—it looks complete. ’Course, it coulda just been something he got out of her kitchen. Hard to tell. I don’t know what the hell it was, but it was a damned big blade.”

  Punch didn’t say anything, but pushed back his cowboy hat, rubbed his forehead, and sighed. He knelt next to her and took a deep breath, then let it out and pulled back the sheet. She was on her stomach, with her head turned to one side. The killer had apparently been behind her when he cut her throat. “Yep. It was that.” Punch had seen knives like that before—in the Army as a young man. Of course, around here there were a lot of veterans and almost as many hunting, hardware, and Army/Navy surplus stores as there were people. Complicating matters, you had the internet—where anything was for sale—so finding the guy who bought a knife that could inflict these wounds would be a matter of sheer luck. Praying silently for a really dumb suspect, he replaced the sheet.

  “Anyone see anything?” he asked Jensen, noting the blood spatter high on the wall three feet from her head. Apparently, she’d been standing when he’d cut her. There were no real signs of a struggle, but there had to have been noise.

  “We’re still canvassing the neighborhood, Punch,” replied Jensen, who was looking a little peaked himself.

  “Call dispatch and get a coupla cars here to pound on some doors. Someone had to hear or see something. You okay, Jensen? You look like you just saw your own mother nude.”

  “I’m okay.” Then, as if to explain, “I seen a lotta bodies in my time, but nothin’ like that. He damned near took her head clean off.”

  “I noticed. Look, when Doc finishes, run everyone but the lab boys and the photographers out of here. I want a first-class effort, here—got it?” Punch looked closely at Jensen, who nodded.

  In the kitchen, Punch noted several open bottles of booze, a cut lime, three shot glasses, and blood in the sink. The tequila was high-end stuff. A vase full of dead flowers sat on the counter. There was no card. “Jensen, make sure we get a sample of this blood, and check that vase for prints.”

  “Right, boss.”

  “I’m going to run downtown for a bit,” Punch said, heading toward the door before stopping. “And Jensen?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let me know when Baker’s got it together.”

  “Will do, boss.”

  Punch was headed to the office to do some coordinating. Nothing for him here until the forensics team got their jobs done. He’d learned a long time ago that sometimes the best thing a leader can do is get out of the way and let people do their jobs. As he got into the unmarked county sedan, he swept the crowd with a practiced glance, memorizing faces and looking for anyone acting suspiciously. Murders just didn’t happen in Custer, so the scene had drawn a crowd. It was not uncommon for killers to come and watch what was going on. In any event, other than the courthouse janitor and a couple of small-town punks, he didn’t see anyone he knew.

  10

  “Unbelievable,” Howard said to the ice in the bottom of his fourth—or was it fifth?—highball. Emily didn’t do much criminal work back then, so she didn’t generally appear in his court. At least, that’s how he had justified it to himself afterward. The bar convention had been in Cody that year. He’d gone, as always, and had sat through all manner of continuing education classes, as well as the mandatory judicial meetings.

  One night early in the week, he’d been cornered by some of Custer’s attorneys, who were bound and determined to drag him and the rest of the Custer judges out for drinks. It was the first pub crawl he’d participated in for a while, and he’d overdone it.

  He was awakened by movement next to him. At some point he realized he was dead drunk, alone at the hotel bar, and looking at his watch in a vain attempt to tell what time it was. He was weeping, like one of the goddamned street drunks who routinely appeared in front of him.

  “Your Honor, can I help you?” was how it all started. The touch of her fingertips at his elbow thrilled him, even as drunk as he was. He wiped at his eyes and mumbled, “Just having a little trouble reading my damned watch—getting old, I guess.”

  “It happens to all of us, Judge,” was all that Emily said.

  Astonished, he could only stammer, “My name is Jon. Call me Jon.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “I don’t want you to regret that—or anything else—in the morning.”

  “Where are the others?”

  “They’ve all gone to their rooms. I think we drank them under the table.” She was on the barstool next to him, looking at him in the mirror. He looked around with an unsteady gaze, and saw the tin roof above him, the bottles lining the wall, and Emily next to him. Uncomfortably close to him, in fact.

  “Would you care for another?” she asked, placing her lips on the straw and slowly sipping a drink that had miraculously appeared, never breaking eye contact. He couldn’t deal with it and looked down.

  “I don’t think so, Ms. Smith. I think that I’ve had more than enough, thank you very much.” He focused on the stains on his slacks until they began to whirl. It was bourbon, if he recalled correctly. Or maybe scotch. Single malt. Who the hell could remember? That was a couple of stops ago. He rose unsteadily, determined to get back to the room before he made a complete and utter fool of himself. The last thing he needed was to do something dumb here; he’d never live it down.

  “Let me help you, Jon,” she said, taking a hand and an elbow. “And call me Emily, please.”

  Things had quickly gotten out of hand when they got to his room. Predictably, he’d performed poorly, if at all (he really couldn’t remember). Back home, she had resisted any contact with him for several weeks. Th
ey had exchanged some office emails that alluded to what went on, and he had made some phone calls, sent some text messages, and—to his everlasting shame—had gotten loaded one night and sent flowers and a handwritten love note to her (in his own name, for Christ’s sake!), all to no avail.

  As time passed, he was able to be around her and transact business as if nothing had ever happened. Until a few months ago, when the demands came.

  “Judge, I wonder if I might bother you for a moment,” she’d said. It was a statement, not a question. She’d known damned well that he would let her bother him anytime, anywhere.

  “Come in, Ms. Smith.” He had motioned for Veronica to close the door on her way out, which she did after shooting the judge a scathing look. “How might I be of assistance?” he had said, loud enough to ensure Veronica could hear.

  “Well, as you know, I missed the deadline to get my response to Mr. Marquez’s motion filed; I’d like an extension,” she had said as she glided toward his desk and sat down. She had a terrific voice.

  “Ms. Smith, this is an improper, ex parte communication—you know that. Besides, even if the other side didn’t object, I’m not sure I can do that. Mr. Marquez’s motion is dispositive, and the relevant deadlines are clearly stated on the case management order. I—”

  “Oh, I’m sure you can, Judge,” Emily had cooed. “You’re the judge, Jon. You have ‘discretion,’ I think it’s called.”

  “Emily, Mr. Marquez is a conscientious attorney with a reputation for getting things done. If I allow you to get away with a late filing, well, I’ll have to let everyone get away with it,” he had protested.

  She had stared at him levelly. “How is your wife, Jon? It’s Margaret, isn’t it?”

  He’d felt his bowels loosen ever so slightly. “You know damned well what her name is.”

  “Well, I’ve always thought that while infidelity probably shouldn’t be a crime, it is still somehow wrong—do you know what I mean? Do you happen to know how Margaret feels about the subject? I mean, does she think someone ought to be prosecuted, or is she content with a simple civil proceeding for dissolution or, in your case, maybe divorce?”

  Howard sat very still for a long time, and then said, “Well, Ms. Smith, I suppose if you got me a response to the motion real soon I could overlook the late filing date.”

  Emily stood, reached out, and smoothed a couple of stray hairs on his head. “I knew you could, Judge. Thank you.”

  He had watched her sashay out of his chambers and close the door. Hating himself, he pressed the intercom. “Veronica? Get me the Thompson file, please.”

  After that, she’d made an occasional demand for a favorable setting, a motion to be decided in her favor, or the dismissal of a charge. To his shame, he’d acceded to every demand she had made. They had never gotten as frequent as he had initially feared, but somehow that made it worse. He’d lived with a sense of foreboding for a while now—one that clouded his entire outlook.

  11

  Veronica and Catherine Schmidt were in Judge Howard’s outer office, awaiting a defense attorney’s arrival. “The word is,” said Veronica, “that she had a lot—and I mean a lot—of boyfriends, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know.” Catherine, one of the assistant prosecutors, fiddled with the stapler on Veronica’s desk. “I never socialized with her much, and I never, ever saw her out with anyone—except in Cody a couple of years ago.”

  “Who was she out with then?”

  “Oh, a bunch of us went out one night during the bar convention and bar-hopped for a while. We even got your boss to join us, although it took some talking to get him out of his room.”

  “Really?” Veronica asked, surprised.

  “He was pretty funny that night,” Catherine recalled. “And I will tell you this: he can hold his liquor.”

  “I’d never have suspected,” Veronica replied, careful not to look toward his office, where the bottle was kept. Time to change the subject. “Who is going to prosecute, assuming the cops catch the guy?”

  “Well, I’m assuming it will be Mike Shepherd,” Catherine said. “He’s the chief deputy.”

  “Do you think he can handle it?” inquired Veronica. “He just seems so . . . fragile, I guess.”

  “I haven’t thought about it, but Mike will have to take the case. The county attorney hasn’t been in a courtroom in years.”

  In truth, Catherine had given quite a bit of thought to the matter. Even a dolt like Veronica could see that Mike wasn’t up to the job. By all rights, then, as the next most senior deputy, Catherine would be in line for the jump. But she hadn’t gotten to where she was by jumping willy-nilly into things; she would step forward if—and only if—the bust was righteous, and the outcome was a foregone conclusion. She damned sure wasn’t gonna stick her neck out on something like this.

  “God, this is all so terrible. I can’t believe it happened,” said Veronica.

  “I know,” agreed Catherine. “I just hope it’s over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we don’t really know what we’re dealing with yet, now do we? I mean, this person or persons—he or she or they or whatever—could be some sort of nutcase.”

  “Oh my God. I—I just assumed we were dealing with someone who had it in for Emily,” Veronica said. She hadn’t even considered anything else.

  “That’s probably what we’ve got. But until we know it for sure, you need to be extra careful,” she said, adding as she left Veronica’s office, “We could have a Ted Bundy running around.”

  “Dude, they almost cut her head clean off,” Fricke was telling Frac as the latter mopped the floor. Fricke had just hung up the phone, and now he took his feet off Veronica’s desk and hollered to Frac in the hallway, “And they gutted her like a fish!”

  “Cool,” said Frac, not quite knowing what a gutted fish looked like. Fricke was mad at him—again. Frac didn’t like people being mad at him. It made him sad. Maybe if he did an extra special job on this floor, Fricke would be nice to him.

  “‘Cool?’” Fricke exclaimed. “Gal gets her head cut off and dissected like a science class frog, and all you got to say is, ‘Cool?’ Boy, you are one dumb sonuvabitch. Finish that floor, dummy. I got another call to make.”

  Ann felt guilty, but she was so excited she was about to jump out of her skin. “This is it!” was all she could think. Her chance to shine. Certainly, the case would go initially to Mike Shepherd, but sure as hell he would kick this football to whoever else wanted it. Shepherd was a good guy; in fact, he had been an excellent mentor and source of knowledge for her over the past couple of years. But no way could his health withstand a capital murder trial, which was exactly what this would be if what Ann had heard—that Emily had been decapitated—was right.

  She picked up the phone and called Shepherd’s office. Bonnie answered on the first ring.

  “The boss in?” Ann asked.

  “No, Ms. Fulks, he is not. He’s at the pharmacy, having a prescription refilled. Shall I tell him you called?”

  “No. Just put me on his calendar for whenever he is supposed to be back,” Ann replied, feeling her heart pounding. “I need to speak with him personally.”

  “I’m afraid his calendar is quite full,” Bonnie replied. “Him being gone was unscheduled, and I had to scramble to rearrange his calendar.”

  “He’ll see me,” Ann replied testily. “It’s very important, and I have news that he will want to hear.”

  By all rights, the case should belong to Shepherd. But if he couldn’t or wouldn’t do it, then Cathy Schmidt would be next in line. Cathy was no risk taker, however, and all murder trials were high-wire acts for the prosecution. If things went as planned, Ann thought, she would soon be sitting first chair in a murder prosecution.

  Tommy was standing in mud up to his knees in a field south of town when his phone rang. He wiped the muck from his hand and answered. “Hello?” He didn’t recognize the number.

  �
��This is Gino from the Longbranch.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where you at?”

  “In the field—maybe twenty miles south of town. Why?”

  “You listening to the radio?”

  “When I’m in the rig. Right now I’m changing a drill bit. The muck out here is like gumbo and I can’t get the damned thing to bite, so I’m gonna try another one. Why?”

  “Listen, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but you know that lawyer you been layin’?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Cops just found her. Someone cut her head clean off, from what I been told.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Yeah, no shit. I only seen her once, but she was sweet lookin’. Sorry, man.”

  “Yeah. . . Sure. . . I gotta go.”

  Tommy jumped out of the rig and found his crew chief. “Boss, I gotta get to town.”

  “You’ll be there in another three hours or a hundred feet, whichever comes first.”

  “Someone killed her.”

  “Who?”

  “That lawyer I been seein’. Emily.”

  “That gal with the phone-sex voice you been tellin’ us about?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus! Sorry. Look, let me call another rig. I think Number 7’s on the way to town. Maybe they can swing by and pick you up.”

  “I’m not sure I ever met her,” Sam said. “Maybe at a meeting of the bar association or something?”

  “She was something else.” Paul turned to check his e-mail. “Divorce attorney. Recently started doing some criminal defense, I’m told. Mostly small-time stuff. I didn't do a lot of stuff with her; I found her difficult to work with. I will say she was easy on the eyes.”

  “So I heard,” Sam said.

  “In any event, the courts will shut down for the funeral.”

  “She a local?”

  “Oh, yeah. Parents are ranchers from east of town. Judges will want to attend. We do that here. Hell, we’re lawyers—if we didn’t attend each other’s funerals, who would go?”