by C. J. Box
“I doubt Coates will be able to infiltrate himself again, though,” I said, ignoring Brian. “Everybody will be on the lookout for the guy.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Brian said. “If he is found innocent, there’ll be nothing in his record. He might even be able to sue to get his job back. You can’t prevent a man from getting a job because the cops may have set him up, you know.”
“Cody didn’t set him up, I’m sure,” Melissa said, scoffing. Brian steepled his fingers on the table and gazed over them at her. “Cody is capable of doing things you might not approve of,” he said. “In fact, I would say it’s possible they targeted this Coates guy and maybe did some things to make their case stronger. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s ever happened. And we know our Cody isn’t pure as the driven snow.”
“Brian!” Melissa said, angry.
“He isn’t,” Brian said. “I’m sorry, Melissa. But Cody takes pride in putting bad men in prison, and he doesn’t mind cutting corners if he needs to. He’s told me that. Once, he showed me what he called his ‘throw-down’ gun. It was a pistol with the serial numbers filed off he would have handy if he ever needed it.”
Melissa shook her head and looked to me for support.
I shrugged. Cody, in confidence, had told me as much before.
Things happened on the street, on both sides, that were under the radar. Cody had told me about some of them. According to Cody, since Mayor Halladay had been elected and had started building housing for the homeless and declared Denver to be a Sanctuary City, we’d been flooded with the indigent and illegal workers, mainly undocumented Mexicans. The gangs preyed on the new populace and sold them drugs and protection. The police, according to Cody, did their best to keep a lid on the situation without calling attention to the sharp rise in crime. When Denver was named host for a major political party convention, word came down from the mayor’s office to “get those people off the streets.” An unofficial crackdown was under way. The level of tension between the newcomers, the gangs, the police, and the mayor’s office was rising. The police, if Cody was an indication of the rest of the force, felt the mayor was “embracing diversity” on the one hand and issuing under-the-table orders to clear out the riffraff on the other. While acting on the mayor’s wishes, individual officers knew that if a brutality accusation was made or an incident captured by a ubiquitous cell-phone camera of a cop pounding on a homeless man or a minority, the mayor would side with the alleged victim because Mayor Halladay was a champion of the downtrodden, according to his spokesmen. Brian had once been very close to Halladay, before he was mayor. They’d been involved in business ventures together, but they’d had a falling-out, and their relationship was no longer cordial.
“Cody might bend the rules,” I said, “but he’d never set up an innocent man. And he’d only cross the line in this case if he thought he was punishing a monster who might do it again. That’s why he was so mad at Moreland. It wasn’t about Cody. It was about the fact that Coates might go free and hurt more kids.”
“Speaking of Judge Moreland,” Brian said, withdrawing a sheaf of papers from his jacket pocket, “Melissa and I have been doing some detective work of our own.”
“Let’s hear it,” I said.
“I’m going to go put pajamas on Angelina,” Melissa said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
While she was gone, Brian said, “It’s amazing what one can find out using Google and a few well-placed friends in the right offices. Plus, there are a couple of wonderful high-society gossips who love to dish.”
With that, he outlined Moreland’s professional and marital history:
“In 1980,” Brian read, “John Moreland graduated from Ridgeview High School in Asheville, North Carolina. He was an outstanding student, first in his class. President of the debate team, quarterback, yadda-yadda. An only child, from what I could find. His parents are deceased.”
“Really? He doesn’t seem that old.”
“He’s forty-five. His parents died in a car accident when John was eighteen. I read the clippings. The police said John’s dad must have fallen asleep while he was driving home and drove head-on into a tree. Both parents were killed on impact, and Mrs. Moreland was thrown thirty feet through the windshield. There was some speculation that someone might have forced them off the road, but no one was ever charged.”
“Was Moreland a suspect?”
“My first thought. But he didn’t appear to be. He was at home with his girlfriend, waiting for his parents to get there. His girlfriend’s name was Dorrie Pence, and she confirmed his whereabouts. Remember that name, Dorrie Pence.”
I nodded.
“I’m still looking into this,” Brian said. “All I can get from the newspapers was it was a tragic accident. The whole community came to the funeral, and there were fund-raisers for Moreland, that kind of thing. I’ve got some real estate contacts in North Carolina, and I’ve put out some feelers to them to find out if they ever heard anything. In my experience, real-estate folks have their fingers into everything in the community—who might be moving, who might be divorcing and selling, that kind of thing. A lot of times they know more about what’s going on than the local cops. I mean, I know more about what’s going on in Denver than that doofus cop who was here, if you know what I mean.”
“Go on,” I said, seeing Brian was still clearly enjoying this.
“Okay, well, he came to Colorado right after he left North Carolina. He attended the University of Colorado on academic scholarships but he had plenty of life-insurance money from the deaths of his parents. He was never a poor college student, that’s for sure. He graduated with a major in political science. Then off to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude—of course. He was twenty-four, and he married his high-school sweetie, Dorrie Pence, in Denver.”
“Ah,” I said. “Dorrie provided the alibi, and he married her.”
“Right-o,” Brian said. “Garrett was born in 1989. No other children. An only child, like his daddy. Anyway, Moreland was in private practice in Denver for the next few years. He was a very highly regarded criminal-defense attorney before switching over to civil litigation. He was named one of the ten best litigators in the nation, yadda-yadda. From what I can find out, he was one of those men who just shines at everything he does. He was appointed United States Attorney and held that position for the next five years. But here’s where it gets interesting.”
Melissa came back downstairs with Angelina in soft yellow pajamas with feet in them. She looked darling, and seemed to be mimicking Brian with her chatter. I took her and held her while Brian went on.
“In 2001, Dorrie dies tragically in a hiking accident in the mountains. John and Garrett were with her, and they were apparently hiking a trail in a canyon when the path gave way. She fell sixty feet and bashed her head in on some rocks. John and Garrett saw the whole thing, but they weren’t able to save her. And it turns out she was six months pregnant at the time with their second child.”
Melissa and I exchanged looks.
“Were they sure it was an accident?” I asked.
Brian nodded. “There’s nothing in any of the news articles about it that suggested anything otherwise. In fact, Moreland is described as distraught and devastated. There isn’t much about Garrett, but he would have been only twelve at the time. Big funeral, lots of city fathers and politicians in attendance. Yadda-yadda.”
“So both his parents and his first wife die in accidents,” I said. “How strange. How many people do we know who’ve died in accidents? I can’t think of any.”
“Your uncle Pete,” Melissa said. “Didn’t he die in a boat accident? Drown or something?”
“There’s one,” I said.
“Do we know anything about Dorrie?” Melissa asked. “Did anyone know her very well?”
“Not many,” Brian said. “Judge Moreland was—and is— at all of the Denver society events and fund-raisers. I’ve seen him myself—he’s a fixture. But ap
parently she didn’t like the limelight, according to my gossips. She went back to the church big-time, apparently. She was a Catholic when they married, and she became very involved in the church here. Going to Mass every morning, that kind of involved. She was, well, very plain-looking from the wedding photo in the newspaper. John looked like some kind of movie star, and he married a homely girl on the heavy side. Later, she got very heavy. My best gossip described her as shy, overweight, and uncomfortable in a crowd. She and the judge were a mismatched pair.”
Melissa snorted. “She sounds inconvenient to a man on the make.”
“It gets better,” Brian said. “John Moreland married ex-model and heir to a cosmetics fortune Kellie Southards almost twelve months to the day Dorrie died. It was a massive wedding. And that same year—2002—he was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Colorado.”
“One year seems a little quick to me,” Melissa said, “for a man who was distraught and devastated.”
“Interesting,” I said, my mind racing. “But don’t forget that all we’re doing is speculating here. And we are talking about a judge who seems incredibly well liked and well connected. We might be jumping to conclusions.”
“And now we get to Garrett,” Brian said. “I’ll let Melissa take it from here.”
“GARRETT MORELAND SEEMS LIKE a very bright and a very troubled young man,” Melissa said. “I don’t think that information will come as any surprise to us. I also learned it is very difficult to get any background on a juvenile through official channels.”
“How did you get what you got?” I asked, impressed.
“A friend of a friend I used to work with downtown is a counselor at Garrett’s high school in Cherry Creek. We had coffee this afternoon while you were at the trial. At first, she was very coy about talking specifically about Garrett because she’s not supposed to, you know. But when I told her the situation we’re in”—she nodded toward Angelina in my arms—“she started telling me things. I’m sworn to secrecy, of course. But what she told me about Garrett makes me even more determined to fight them, Jack.”
“Not that you were wavering before,” I said.
“No. But I think we’re dealing with a very sick boy.”
“What did you find out?” I asked, chilled.
“Garrett had a reputation before he even got to high school,” she said, digging the pad she used for grocery lists out of the diaper bag near her feet. “He wasn’t an unknown quantity. There was an incident in middle school that made the rounds and she heard about it from a fellow counselor. Apparently, the middle-school counselor knew Garrett quite well because he’d talked to the boy after the death of his mother the year before. He said he thought the boy was hollow inside, and he couldn’t get through to him to get him to grieve properly. Anyway, since Garrett knew the counselor, he went to see him one day to complain that his friends wouldn’t have anything to do with him anymore and he wanted the school to punish them. He gave the counselor a list of four boys who should be punished.”
I shook my head.
“The counselor asked why the friends should be punished, and Garrett told him they wouldn’t walk to school with him anymore, that they ditched him whenever they could.”
“Kid stuff,” I said, remembering how casually cruel young teenagers could be.
Melissa said, “Next to each of the boys’ names Garrett had written suggested punishments. He said two of the boys should be branded with a hot iron. He said one of them should be forced to wear girls’ clothes for a month. And the last should be castrated.”
Brian whistled.
“The counselor was alarmed and took the list to the vice principal. Keep in mind this was two years after the Columbine massacre, so school officials were ultrasensitive to anything that resembled a threat. But apparently the vice principal knew Garrett’s father, and they agreed to handle the situation quietly. John Moreland and the vice principal gathered the four boys and Garrett together in a conference room and asked them to talk it out, to work out their problems. What it came down to was the four boys thought Garrett was weird and scary. Garrett was reprimanded for making the list, but he wasn’t disciplined in any way. The counselor was furious at the outcome, and told his colleague—the woman I had coffee with—about it when Garrett moved on to high school.
“In high school,” Melissa said, “there were disturbing writings. Garrett was—or is—interested in creative writing, and he wrote several fantastically violent plays and short stories. The counselor I had coffee with had read them and agreed with the English teacher that they crossed the line. Torture, beheadings, that kind of thing. He was very interested in criminal behavior. She talked to Garrett about this, but Garrett said he had the right of free speech, especially since he was an artist. He said he would get his father involved if the school tried to stop him from being an artist.”
I said, “I thought these were the kinds of things that got kids bounced out of school these days,” recounting stories I’d heard and read about students who were expelled for things like bringing a plastic butter knife to school in their lunch sacks.
“They do,” Brian said, “but apparently it depends on who you are. And who your father is.”
Melissa said, “The counselor said Garrett brought in books he’d found in the school library filled with violence and violent images, and movies he’d rented at Blockbuster which were just as graphic as what he’d written. He built a case that his work wasn’t any worse than what anybody could get their hands on just about anywhere.”
“A future criminal defense attorney,” I said, thinking of Ludik’s performance that day.
“So nothing was done with Garrett,” Melissa said. “This empowered him, according to the counselor. And so did his money, which he flashed around the school constantly. He always has the best car, the best clothes, the best computer. He was the first kid at Cherry Creek to have an iPhone— that kind of thing. Other kids resent him for it, but they also want to be around him because he was always willing to pay for lunch, or give them rides, or buy them alcohol.”
“This is where his gang connection comes in,” Brian said.
Melissa nodded. “The counselor said when Garrett was a junior, he started showing up to basketball and football games with gang members from downtown. They were like his posse. Garrett played it up. The gang connections gave him power. So here was a kid who had both money and power in high school and nobody—including the teachers or the counselor—took him on. The school started having some serious drug problems that year as well, and the counselor suspected Garrett’s gang pals of selling crystalmeth and other drugs to students.”
“A criminal-defense attorney and a gang kingpin,” Brian said. “That’s a deadly combination.”
“Can we prove this?” I asked.
Melissa said, “In a court of law? Like in front of a judge if we could get a custody hearing to keep Angelina?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling hopeful for the first time.
“There have to be quite a few students in that high school who would say the same things the counselor told me,” she said.
Brian nodded, excited. “With the right bulldog lawyer and a parade of kids and teachers who know Garrett, I could see a judge ruling that you should keep Angelina for her own well-being and safety.”
I wanted to believe him.
“Think about it, Jack,” Brian said. “You’ve got a man whose parents and first wife died mysteriously and a son who comes across like Little Scarface. What court would rule they should get a baby girl because of a ridiculous technicality?”
“And maybe it doesn’t even have to go that far,” Melissa said. “Maybe we talk with Judge Moreland and tell him what we know. I’m sure he doesn’t want this all aired in a courtroom. It might be enough to make him go away.”
WE STAYED UP LATE after Angelina was put to bed and Brian kept us optimistic and hopeful. He was able to get Melissa to laugh at his jokes, and it was a wond
erful sound to hear. It was as if days and nights of built-up terrors and fears were being released.
BRIAN WAS PULLING ON his coat to leave when there was a knock on the door. Melissa and Brian froze and looked at me. I glanced at the clock: 1:20.
A combination of fear and rage not far under the surface revealed itself. Were the boys back? If so, this time I wouldn’t be humiliated. I ran upstairs and got the .45.
“Jack!” Melissa said, seeing the weapon in my fist.
“They may have paintball guns,” I said, “but I have the real thing.”
“Oooh,” Brian said, shaking his head, “I don’t know …”
But I’d already thrown open the front door, ready and willing to level the Colt at Garrett’s or Luis’s face.
Cody slumped against the threshold, his face flushed, his eyes watery. There was snow on his shoulders and head.
“Go ahead,” he slurred, “shoot me.”
I put the gun aside, and Brian and I helped him in. He could barely walk, and we steered him toward the couch. The smell of bourbon on him was strong. He sat down in a heap.
Melissa said, “Cody, you’re covered in blood. Are you hurt?”
I hadn’t even noticed, but now I saw it: dark floral patterns of blood on his pant legs and down the front of his coat. His knuckles were bloody, the skin peeled back.
“I’m just fucking dandy,” Cody said, “but that kid out there in the Hummer with the paintball gun isn’t doing so hot.”
SEVEN
LIKE SPRING SNOWSTORMS IN the Rockies, late-fall snowstorms often had a particular kind of all-encompassing intensity and volume that could make you slip out of your everyday life, look around, and say, “Do we have enough groceries in the house?”
But that night, when Cody showed up at our house drunk and bloody, the snow didn’t divert attention from where we were but steered it back from our brief little respite of hope, and made everything more focused and harder-edged.