Closer Than You Know

by Brad Parks

  Otherwise, I just hobbled along, all the while keeping track of my various legal entanglements. Mr. Honeywell was still trying to pry the name of the confidential informant in my drug case out of the Sheriff’s Office in time for the motion hearing.

  The negotiations were contentious. The Sheriff’s Office was balking at revealing the identity of its informant—who was, after all, supposed to be confidential. The judge promised he would close the courtroom and seal the transcripts, which satisfied the Sheriff’s Office. But it didn’t satisfy the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, which brought up concerns about witness retaliation in drug cases. The prosecutor, Amy Kaye, didn’t want to reveal the informant’s name until the hearing itself.

  But Mr. Honeywell won that issue too. There was apparently a case involving a man named Keener a bunch of years back where an appeals court had ruled the Commonwealth had to both reveal the name of its witness and do so in a reasonable time period to allow the defense time to prepare.

  This was all being haggled over on Tuesday, while I was dishing out hash browns—scattered, smothered, and covered—at Waffle House. So I wasn’t privy to the details.

  I just know that by the time my shift ended, I had an urgent voicemail from Mr. Honeywell. The judge had finally come up with a plan that satisfied all sides.

  And it involved a face-to-face meeting with the defendant.

  * * *

  • • •

  First thing Wednesday morning, I met Mr. Honeywell in the lobby of the courthouse.

  He had asked me to wear something nice, so I picked out a light-blue sleeveless knit dress that I had acquired during one of my thrift-store dives. He was back to his gray suit. I was beginning to think it was the only one he owned.

  As soon as I was through the metal detector, he rose from a bench and limped toward me.

  “Good morning, Ms. Barrick,” he said. “You’re looking lovely today.”

  “Thanks,” I said, shaking his hand. “What’s this all about anyway?”

  “Search me,” he said with a little shrug. “Judge Robbins used to be the commonwealth’s attorney in Waynesboro. We’ve had our battles. He’s not one to do the defense any favors, believe me. And he can be a little . . . well, unconventional, put it that way. He said he wanted to meet with you before he revealed the identity of the confidential informant. And if you ask me, it’s best to give a judge what he wants. So here we are.”

  I followed Mr. Honeywell at his slow pace up to the second floor. We sat in Judge Robbins’s reception area for a while, waiting for the judge to do whatever it is judges do when they’re not on the bench. Then we were summoned into a room lined by bookshelves, with a stately oak desk in the middle of the room. Behind it was a white-haired white man in a dark-blue suit. He had two chins. A light dusting of goatee did little to help define the first.

  There were three chairs in front of the judge’s desk. One was filled by Amy Kaye.

  “Good morning, Judge,” Mr. Honeywell said, then nodded toward the prosecutor. “Ms. Kaye.”

  “Come in, come in,” the judge said. He had a high-pitched, somewhat pinched voice. He struggled to get his gut out from under the desk as he stood up to greet us.

  “Judge, I’d like you to meet Melanie Barrick.”

  “Good God, Bill, this is your client?” Judge Robbins said.

  I suppose he had been expecting the Melanie Barrick he had seen in my mug shot—a woman in an orange jumpsuit with tousled hair. His gaze traveled up and down my body at least three times. I was starting to appreciate Mr. Honeywell’s sartorial wisdom, to say nothing of his legal mind. Now I fully understood why he talked about “the visuals” when he told me he was opting for a bench trial.

  In my college feminist days, I might have been offended about the objectification of women, the tyranny of the patriarchy, and all those other things that had been so important back then. They still were. But not as important as my son.

  “Yes, sir,” Mr. Honeywell said evenly.

  “Nice to meet you, Judge,” I said, without any hint I knew he was screwing me with his eyes.

  The judge attempted to recover himself. “Have a seat, please.”

  Mr. Honeywell and I took the chairs on the left side, just like this was a courtroom. Kaye sat in the one on the right.

  “Ms. Barrick, I—” Judge Robbins began, then stopped himself. He still seemed a little rattled. Finally, he settled on: “As you’re aware, Ms. Barrick, the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office has some issues with revealing to you and your attorney the identity of the confidential informant,” he said, tipping his head toward Kaye. “I assume your attorney has explained this to you?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “I understand her concerns, of course. At the same time, you have your constitutional rights, and I can’t deny them to you. Ultimately, the Commonwealth has to produce this witness so we can have what’s known as a Franks hearing. But before I tell you and your attorney who this witness is, I want you and I to have an understanding about something.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said again.

  He pointed a fat finger at me. “We don’t have problems with witness intimidation here in the valley, and we’re going to keep it that way. Do you understand? Killing a witness is a capital offense in Virginia. Do you know what that means?”

  I glanced at Mr. Honeywell, whose eyes were even more bugged out than usual.

  “It means you’d get the death penalty,” the judge continued.

  Mr. Honeywell gripped his chair. Even Amy Kaye seemed unsettled.

  “Judge,” she began, “I don’t think this is really—”

  “I’m not talking to you, Ms. Kaye. I’m talking to Ms. Barrick here. I know there are some liberal judges up north who get squeamish about the death penalty. I’m not one of those judges. Now, you don’t seem like the type to make any trouble. But I don’t want to judge a book by its cover. If anything happens to this witness, I will hold you personally accountable. I don’t want him threatened, I don’t want him harassed, I don’t want anyone you’re associated with to approach him in any way. And by God, if he disappears, I will see to it you get the needle if it’s the last thing I do. Are we clear?”

  “Judge,” Mr. Honeywell said, no longer able to hide his outrage. “This is highly inappropriate and incredibly prejudicial. I don’t—”

  “Shut it, Billy. I ain’t talking to you either,” Robbins said, then returned his attention to me. “Are we clear, miss?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, a third time. What else was there to say?

  “Good. Now,” he said, then started hunting for something on his desk. “Ah, yes. Here we go. This is the confidential informant. Ms. Kaye was good enough to print out his rap sheet for us all. He’s no choirboy, of course. They never are. But this hearing will be about his actions in regards to this case. It will not be an airing of his criminal history. Got it?”

  Mr. Honeywell glared at him for a moment before allowing a terse “Yes, sir.”

  Judge Robbins slid a folder across the desk at Mr. Honeywell, who picked it up. He leaned toward me a little so I could see it. The first page was a mug shot, and it nearly caused me to fall out of my chair.

  The confidential informant was Slash, aka Richard Coduri, aka the mystery plumber.

  So not only had he planted the drugs in my house, he had also called the Sheriff’s Office to tell them the drugs were there, then lied about making a buy from me.

  He then told the Sheriff’s Office—and, after that, Social Services—that I had inquired about selling my baby.

  This, for $5,000 and a pile of cocaine.

  All I could think about was the trouble I would be in if Richard Coduri died of an overdose; or if he accidentally got hit by a car, or found early death any of the other number of ways an addict can wind up killing himself; or if Teddy and Wendy decided
the next act of their romantic play would be to go after the man.

  Mr. Honeywell made a strange noise in his throat. I didn’t need to tell him this was the same man I had photographed in Hardee’s. He had already figured it out and was now trying to reconcile it with known facts, just like I was.

  “Thank you, Judge,” is all he said.

  “I’m serious, Ms. Barrick. You are not to have any contact with this witness, are we clear?”

  “Yes, Judge,” I said.

  “All right. I’m glad we understand each other,” he said, standing up. “Thank you all for coming.”

  The three of us stood up. Amy Kaye said farewell. Mr. Honeywell didn’t say a word. He was still clearly furious, and he was limping toward the door before he uttered something he’d later regret. I followed him out.

  Once we were back in the judge’s waiting room, I thought that was the end of things. But Amy Kaye surprised me by calling out, “Ms. Barrick, do you have a moment?”

  I turned to face her. She was older than me by about a decade, solidly built, with a no-nonsense cut to her short, dark hair. The first time we had met, a year before, we had been on the same side of the law. Now we were adversaries.

  Curiously, there was something about her demeanor toward me that hadn’t changed. I couldn’t say exactly what. I just knew she still passed the five-second test.

  “Yes?” I said.

  Mr. Honeywell had stopped and turned.

  “I haven’t forgotten what happened to you last March,” she said.

  “Oh,” was all I could think to say in reply.

  “March eighth,” she said, looking me straight in the eyes, holding her gaze there so I’d know she was serious. Then she reiterated, “I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She nodded, then exited.

  FORTY-ONE

  The comment had surprised Amy probably even more than it had Melanie Barrick.

  I haven’t forgotten what happened to you.

  Amy hadn’t gone into Judge Robbins’s chambers for that meeting thinking she’d say a thing. Melanie Barrick was the defendant in a major drug case. Yes, it sometimes happened that perpetrators of one crime had been victims of another. But Amy was usually quite clear about separating the two.

  Really, where had those words come from? Was it just because she felt bad for this woman after Robbins—loose cannon and noted law-and-order lunatic—had threatened her?

  Or was it guilt about having struck out with Warren Plotz?

  Or was it because she had spent so much time after work staring at that pinned-up map in her home office?

  She still hadn’t decided what to make of that. Maybe nothing. It was entirely possible the rapist was simply being cautious. Staunton was a city—not a big city, but a city nevertheless. It was more densely populated than the county, and that meant more neighbors to see things, more cops per square mile, more chances to be caught. There were very practical reasons to steer clear of it.

  Or did the fact that the man had seemingly focused so narrowly on Augusta County really mean something?

  The human brain is hardwired with a fervent desire to make sense of the world, to create connections between events whether they exist or not. From a rationalist’s standpoint, it’s something of a design flaw. It’s what led ancient people to believe if they danced a certain way, the rain would fall. It’s what led modern people to believe vaccines caused autism.

  Amy was trying to guard against that kind of thinking now. Especially when there were two recent developments her brain was craving to link up. The first was the missing drugs, which had been taken from a (supposedly) secure lockup in the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office. Second was her map, with all its pins, every last one of them within the jurisdiction of . . . the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office.

  It was leading her to a conclusion she absolutely did not want to draw. She thought of Skip Kempe, of Jason Powers. Physically, both fit the incredibly broad description of an average-size white male under the age of fifty.

  But she knew these men, didn’t she? They were decent to the core, dedicated lawmen. She remembered Powers’s voice when he told her about Lilly Pritchett and his excitement when he found the prints at the scene. She considered Kempe, the Aldous Huxley reader, and the way he patiently testified at trials.

  No way were those two responsible. It had to be someone else from their office.

  But now, as she walked back to her office from the judge’s chambers, there was one more event she found herself attempting to lasso in with the others: the Melanie Barrick drug bust.

  Truly, Barrick was an outlier in the drug world, an educated, married mother with no record, suddenly turning to dealing at age thirty-one. Amy had dismissed any thought of how unlikely that was, simply because there was no question the drugs had been discovered in the woman’s house.

  Except who made the discovery? Deputies from the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office. With Kempe as lead investigator. And Powers as the boss of it all.

  Ridiculous. Totally. Correlation is not causation. Dances don’t make the rain fall. There were probably attacks—in Staunton and in nearby counties—she simply didn’t know about. She just had to keep plugging away until she got some kind of break.

  Check that. She had gotten a break: She had the fingerprint now. She’d send that off to the lab in Roanoke and wait patiently for any results. If she kept following the process—like she hadn’t done with Plotz—she’d eventually get this guy.

  As for Melanie Barrick? Yes, she remained an unlikely drug dealer. But Amy had to chase all the conspiracy theories from her mind. It was her job as a prosecutor to present enough evidence to overcome reasonable doubt, not to definitively disprove every possibility that a wildly inventive mind could create.

  And there was no question what a reasonable person would conclude given the facts of the case.

  * * *

  • • •

  Amy arrived back at her office to find a note on her desk from Aaron Dansby, requesting an audience.

  She had already ignored one such note on Tuesday afternoon, so she decided to get it over with. She made the short stroll down the hallway and into the pages of Southern Living.

  Dansby was wearing one of his good suits and a bow tie. Claire had struck again.

  “Hey,” he said when he saw her in the doorway. “Grab a chair. I just wanted an update. What’s new with my man Mookie’s appeal? Powers find those drugs yet?”

  “Nope, sorry,” Amy said, taking a seat. “And we might as well start facing the fact that they probably never will.”

  Dansby drummed a pen on his desk. “So break this down for me. When is this all going to come out?”

  “After mid-April if that’s what you’re worried about,” Amy said. “I haven’t even filed our response yet. I’ve got a few weeks to do that. Then the Appellate Court will schedule oral arguments. That won’t happen for a few months. Then they’ll issue a ruling, which will take another little while. Then, if the ruling goes against us, it gets tossed back to Circuit Court, at which point the trial gets scheduled. I’m sure we’re looking at after November.”

  “Really?” he said, brightening more. “You think you could delay it that long?”

  “It’s not me delaying it. That’s just how long it takes.”

  “Well, that’s great news,” he said.

  Amy might have been angry except she was so unsurprised. Dansby didn’t care about losing the conviction as long as he had already won the election.

  “Anyhow,” he continued, “I’m speaking to Rotary in a few minutes and I want to give them something good. What’s up with Coke Mom?”

  Amy didn’t need to be told there was a large overlap between Rotary and the crowd that would determine Dansby’s political future.

  “We’ve got a motion
hearing a week from Friday,” she said.

  “A motion hearing. What motion?”

  “The defense is challenging the warrant. They’re trying to say the CI the Sheriff’s Office used made everything up.”

  “What?” Dansby said, sitting up, alarmed. “Did he?”

  “I doubt it. Kempe said the guy is solid.”

  Dansby nodded, but Amy could tell from his face he was still working something out.

  “So the motion hearing consists of Kempe testifying?” he asked.

  “Him and the CI, yeah.”

  “The CI testifies?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So the confidential informant doesn’t get to stay confidential? That doesn’t seem right. Can’t we fight that?”

  “We already tried,” Amy said. “Ultimately, if the defense makes an issue out of it, the Sheriff’s Office eventually has to show its hand. Melanie Barrick has a right to face her accuser.”

  “You’re going to put the CI on the stand?”

  “Well, technically, the defense has to put him on the stand. For purposes of this hearing, the CI is actually their witness. So is Kempe, for that matter. It makes things a little tougher on the defense, because it means it can’t just sit back and potshot like it normally does. It has to actually build an argument.”

  “Yeah, but what happens if the CI cracks under the pressure or gets tripped up? I mean, a good lawyer can turn anyone in circles.”

  “Then it’s up to me to rehabilitate him on cross,” Amy said.

  “But if it’s really bad, I mean . . . These CIs, they’re mostly druggies and losers, right? If this guy was a real mess on the stand, what happens then?”

  “Theoretically? We could lose the search warrant. And if we lost the warrant, we’d lose the case. But that’s not going to happen. Not with Robbins hearing this. You should have heard him earlier today. I was in his office when he told Melanie Barrick that if anything untoward happened to the CI before he had a chance to testify, he’d personally see to it she got the needle.”