The Judgment

by William J. Coughlin

  That did it. The whine ceased. There was a flurry of steps in the hall on the other side of the door. But when the door opened, it was not Ernest Hemingway’s smiling face I beheld but rather a sour one much more like Margaret Hamilton’s. The cleaning woman, of course.

  “What do you want?” she asked in a voice filled with suspicion and grit.

  “I was looking for Father Chuck. Is he around?”

  “Around? He hasn’t been around all week. He’s at some retreat way up around the Sault someplace.”

  I’d forgotten about that, of course. He had told me he would be away on that retreat with the Dominicans all this week. But what about Lee Higgins’s funeral?

  “He’ll be back tonight?”

  “Late tonight. It’s a long drive.”

  “But he’s saying the funeral Mass for Lee Higgins tomorrow, isn’t he? He knows about that?”

  “He knows because I told him. Everyone was runnin’ around, sayin’, ‘Oh, where’s Father Chuck? We just got to get in touch with him so he can say Mass for that poor little boy.’ Turned out I was the only one in the whole darned town knew where he was and how to get hold of him. He never goes anyplace but he leaves a number with me.

  “Well, you sort of saved the day, didn’t you?” I said, pandering to her silly self-congratulation. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

  I felt like I’d wasted the morning when I got back to the office. There was sturdy Mrs. Fenton behind her desk, back from lunch and looking disapprovingly at me as she always seemed to do. Yet subtly she shifted her eyes to the right, putting me on notice that the couch that served as my only piece of waiting room furniture was now occupied.

  I turned and looked, and there were two people, middle-aged and not very distinguished looking. The man wore a suit, old but well preserved, and a shirt that was buttoned up to the top yet without a tie. The woman had on a Jackie Kennedy-style dress from the early Sixties, probably an antique of its kind. She held a purse tight in her lap, twisting its strap with such nervous energy that it looked for all the world as if she meant to break it off.

  The two of them looked familiar. It seemed to me that I had met them recently, but where it was I couldn’t quite say.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Evans have been waiting to see you for a while,” said Mrs. Fenton. “Nearly an hour.”

  And then it hit me who they were. They were the parents of the kid who had falsely accused Father Chuck of molesting him out in Hub City.

  I was a little ashamed of the way I’d treated them, even though I got the result I’d aimed for. I was afraid this might be awkward. “Please come into my office,” I said. They followed me inside. I left the door open and settled down behind the desk. “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  Mrs. Evans leaned forward tensely in her chair. “It’s our son. He’s been arrested.”

  “No!” said her husband emphatically. “No, he hasn’t, Marge. They just took him in for questioning. Now, there’s a big difference there, ain’t that so, sir?”

  “Yes, there is,” I said, “a world of difference. What was the matter they wanted to talk to him about?”

  “Aw, it was those kids gettin’ killed around the county,” he said. “He don’t know nothin’ about that. It’s just the last one was found out on Clarion, not too far from our place. And that woman cop, she’s got it in for him because of that other business with that Catholic priest. That’s all over. That got settled. I don’t know why she won’t leave him alone.”

  Just what I was afraid of. Sam Evans was Sue’s big break in the case. The kid needed a lawyer, all right, and needed one right away. But if I were to take this on, it could do serious damage to our relationship. That much seemed pretty sure.

  “When did they take him in?” I asked.

  “What time was it they actually left, Marge?”

  “I don’t know, around eleven, I guess it was. They showed up earlier with this search warrant they waved under my nose. Poor Sam was out in the garage working on the snowblower, trying to fix it. She got him alone in there and started talking to him. The other cop, the one who had the search warrant, he started digging around the house. He just didn’t have any respect at all! Me, I got on the phone to get Delbert here home to deal with this.”

  “I’m kind of a handyman,” he put in. “I do little jobs for folks all over the county. Ain’t too many want to do fix-it work anymore. We get by.”

  “So they took your son in about eleven?” I looked at my watch. It was almost two. There was no telling what the kid had said in three hours of intensive interrogation. He was suggestible and wasn’t the brightest bulb I’d ever met. “And what did they remove from the house?”

  “Wasn’t much,” said Mrs. Evans. “Just a pair of Sam’s old shoes and some magazines. You know, the dirty kind. I didn’t know he had them.”

  “Yessir, Mr. Sloan, we know he’s entitled to a lawyer, and we’d like you to go over there, and kinda look after his interest. We know you’re the best lawyer in the county, we’ve read about you, and then there was that visit you paid us that time—you were real tough. If you’d be just as tough to the cops, that’d suit us just fine.”

  I sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy. “Look, Mr. and Mrs. Evans, you’re right. Your son does need an attorney immediately. For reasons I’d rather not go into, I’m a little too close to the case to take it on. I recommend you go right over to John Dibble, across from the courthouse, and get him on it.”

  “What’s the matter,” said Mr. Evans, his indignation rising. “Our money ain’t good enough?”

  “It’s not that at all.”

  “We can pay,” said his wife, and then she started to cry.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ve got a potential conflict of interest here. I just don’t think I’m the one to help. If you want to, I’ll put in a call to Dibble, let you talk to him from here. He’s a good lawyer. I’ve seen him work. But I think it’s absolutely essential to get somebody over there right away to make sure your son’s rights are being respected. You do understand what I mean, don’t you?”

  “What I understand is a lawyer like you is in with the cops and the Catholic Church and all the rich people. You’re real cozy with ’em all, and you don’t want to mess things up.”

  “Mr. Evans, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

  He looked me straight in the eye, clenched his jaw, and had just two words for me. “Prove it,” he said.

  8

  Eiven though they may have been used to seeing me around at Kerry County Police Headquarters, there was nevertheless a general murmur that ran through the front office when I announced that I was Samuel Evans’s attorney, and that I wished to see my client.

  “Who would that be again, Charley?” the desk sergeant asked as he shuffled through the forms on his desk. “Got no booking papers for him here.”

  “As far as I know, he hasn’t been booked,” I said. “Sue Gillis and another officer brought him in for questioning, probably around eleven-thirty today.”

  “Oh, well, questioning, I don’t know.” He shook his head, as if to indicate that this was completely beyond his range of responsibility. He was trying to play dumb, which for him was pretty easy.

  “Tony,” I said—his name was Tony Makarides, and his brother was the Benny of Benny’s Diner—“you look in your logbook for today around eleven-thirty, maybe a little earlier, and I’m sure you’ll find the right entry. Evans? Gillis? And just where I might be likely to find my client.”

  “Yeah, here it is. Interrogation Room Three. Would you like to take a seat, and I’ll send in your request?”

  “If I didn’t know you better, Tony, I’d swear you were stalling.”

  “It’s a big case, Charley. They like to have as much time as they can with the guy without a lawyer around.”

  “They’ve had plenty,” I said, “almost three hours already.”

  “Sue’s really gonna be surprised, Charley. I thought you and she were …”
<
br />   “I’ll handle that. Just get me back there, Tony. I’m in a hurry.”

  I meant that to sound a bit threatening. I had raised my voice a little, and so Tony waved over one of the civilian office girls and instructed her to take me to Interrogation Room Three and stay with me until I’d made contact with the officers inside. She may not have been terrifically bright herself, but she knew enough to do that. And she managed that long walk down the hall to our destination without once mentioning Sue Gillis to me. So maybe she was smarter than Tony, or at least more tactful.

  Behind the door I could hear a voice raised, female. The words were garbled, but the tone was unmistakable—tough, stern, hectoring. There really was a cop voice, wasn’t there? I just never before heard it in soprano. I knocked hard on the door and waited.

  The door was thrown wide, and Sue stood there, looking angry and clearly annoyed at the interruption.

  The expression on her face went from annoyance to confusion, then back to annoyance. “Charley,” she said sharply, “what are you doing here?”

  Careful to remove any trace of a smile from my face, I solemnly repeated the formula to her: “Officer Gillis, I have been engaged as Samuel Evans’s attorney, and I wish to see my client.” Then I added, “Alone.”

  “You … why … what?” She was speechless.

  Then I heard a familiar voice behind her. “Let him in, Sue.” It was Stash Olesky, the assistant prosecutor I had talked to out on Clarion Road the night before last.

  She stepped back, exposing a room I’d been in a few times before. Interrogation Room Three was not much different from One or Two. But it was a little bigger than the others, accommodating a good-sized table and four chairs.

  The chief addition, however, was a large mirror set into one wall, which of course provided a view from a small closet-sized room on the other side of all that happened inside Interrogation Room Three. It would also be wired for sound, so that anything that was said would be piped into the little closet.

  At the head of the table sat Sam Evans, the guest of honor. The kid seemed to be in pretty poor shape. His head hung low. As I walked inside the room and saw his face, it looked to me like he’d been crying. I doubted that he’d been mistreated physically, but three hours of intensive questioning, three hours of sustained antagonism, would be enough to penetrate any defenses most of us might put up. For a kid like Sam Evans, who would never make it as a rocket scientist, and whose recent history indicated some deep-seated personal problems, an ordeal such as the one he’d just endured could have a crushing effect. Looking at Sam, I wondered if I’d be able to get through to him when we sat down to talk.

  In another chair, pulled back from the table, sat Stash. Our eyes met. What I read in them was something close to embarrassment, which seemed a little strange. I’d like to get him aside out in the hall to confer about this, lawyer to lawyer.

  Finally, leaning against the wall, looking tired and hung over, was Bud Billings. His jacket was off, his tie was down, and his collar was open. He looked like he was ready to quit, even if Sue wasn’t.

  She certainly wasn’t. The initial shock of finding me at the door in my official capacity was now gone. She may have looked disheveled and exhausted, but she pulled me over to one side and whispered, “Charley, you’ve got to give me more time with him. I’ve got him right to the point where he’s about to break. Can’t you just go away and come back in an hour?”

  “Then there’s been no confession?”

  “Not yet, but he’s already changed his story once.”

  “Sue, you’ve had him three hours. It would be unethical for me to do what you’re asking. He needs counsel. Don’t blow your case by infringing his rights.”

  “He’s right, Sue,” said Olesky. “Let’s get out of here and leave the two of them alone.” He was already on his feet, heading for the door.

  “Not in here, Stash, if it’s all the same to you,” I said, pointing at the big mirror on the wall. “Any private office will do for us.”

  He nodded his assent. Sue looked from him to me, suspicion and betrayal in her eyes.

  “What’re you going to do, tell him to plead the Fifth?”

  “I always advise my clients to tell the truth.”

  If looks could kill, I’d be a dead man. She turned on her heel and clicked sharply out of the room. Bud Billings left, shaking his head. Stash paused, frowning. “I think Sue’s gotten awfully close to this, maybe too close. It’s put us all through the ringer. You, too, Charley, if I remember right.”

  “Me, too,” I agreed.

  “Well, you can use that office across the hall. Nobody’ll be around there for a while.”

  “We’ll only need about ten minutes.”

  “That’s okay. We can all use a break.” He nodded back at Sam Evans. “Your boy’s in pretty bad shape.”

  I waited until Stash had cleared the door and turned down the hall, then I turned back to the sorry figure seated at the table and said, “Okay, Sam, let’s take a trip across the hall.”

  All I got in response was a sniffle or two, but he heaved himself up out of the chair and started for the door. Mission accomplished. His eyes appeared to be open but only as narrow ‘slits. I wondered if he might not be exaggerating his condition a little for my benefit. Playing along, I took him under the elbow and led him across the hall to the office we had been promised. Glad to find the door unlocked, I put him inside and let him find his way to a chair. He collapsed in it, perhaps a bit too dramatically.

  I took a chair opposite him, pulled it close, but before speaking, I looked him over and tried to get some sense of just who I would be talking to. He was an ordinary sort of kid, skinny, badly in need of a haircut. He had a face inherited from his father—a prominent nose and a receding chin—the kind that might be called rat faced and probably was by the kids he grew up with. In any case, he seemed younger than his age. At nineteen, he was an adult in the eyes of the law, yet to me he seemed to be a child, probably because he was slow. Could he have murdered Catherine Quigley? I really had no idea. He hadn’t shown me his eyes yet. Could he have laundered her clothes, dressed her up, and wrapped her in transparent plastic like a little doll to be found at the side of the road? Anything was possible. I looked at his hands. Although they were thin, and his fingers were long and slender, there was no grace or control in them. They seemed to coil and twitch as he began folding and unfolding his fingers nervously in his lap. Not a good sign. He was far too twitchy, his hands reflecting his instability.

  “What have you told them?” I asked him.

  “Not much.” His voice was thin and cracked, like a twelve- or thirteen-year-old kid. Theoretically, he was just leaving it. “That’s ‘cause there ain’t much to tell.”

  “You’d better let me be the judge of that.”

  He was still sniffling. I pulled out my handkerchief and handed it to him. He blew hard then and opened his eyes wide for the first time. He wiped them and blinked a couple of times. He may have gotten his features from his father, but his eyes were his mother’s—a light blue, liquid, almost milky, the kind to which tears come easily. They seemed to be the eyes of a victim, rather than a victimizer, but maybe that was too hasty, a bit too easy.

  “The first thing I told them,” he began, “I said I wasn’t even out there at all. I didn’t know nothin’ about it.”

  “But that wasn’t the truth, was it?”

  “Naw, but that’s what I kept tellin’ them because I didn’t want to talk about what I seen out there. But they were real tough with me, especially that woman. She was real mean, said they had someone saw me out there on Clarion, had my footprint out there in the mud near where … well, you know.”

  “You didn’t want to talk about that?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too weird, man. Give you bad dreams.”

  “Yes,” I said, “it might. I was out there. I know what you mean.”

  “You get bad dre
ams from it?”

  “Not yet. But dreams are funny. They sneak up on you.”

  “They sure do!” He said it so emphatically that it made me wonder what he had locked up in his unconscious. And given what a creep his father was, I also thought about what kind of repressed rage this Sam Evans was carrying around.

  “But eventually you admitted that you had been out there on Clarion Road, and you told them what you’d seen. Is that correct?”

  “Yeah, I told them.”

  “Tell me now.”

  And he did. In a halting way, prompted from time to time by questions from me, Sam Evans told his story. He said he had been out on Clarion Road coming back from a cleanup job for Mrs. Belder, a widow, who lives alone in a farmhouse about ten miles outside Hub City. It was a chicken coop he’d knocked down to haul away in the old Datsun pickup truck that his father let him use for such odd jobs. His father drove the family’s big Ford pickup. It was pretty old, too, but in much better shape than the Datsun. The Datsun was badly in need of a clutch and had been giving them trouble for a long time. Finally, with the heavy load Sam was hauling away from Mrs. Belder’s place, the little pickup broke down completely. He had managed to get it over to the side of the road, but that was as far as it would go. He was five miles from home, it was well after dark, and snow had begun to fall, but he had no choice but to go the rest of the way on foot.