The Undertaker's Widow

by Phillip Margolin

  "I know that, Judge," Dennis agreed.

  "Just give me some time to think."

  "Cedric Riker also suspects that you fixed Crease's hearing and he wants your blood. If Riker had his way, we'd be questioning you at the station with a rubber hose and klieg lights shining in your eyes. I'd rather trust your good instincts and have you cooperate because you know it's the right thing to do, but we can't wait very long for you to decide."

  "You see our position?" Dennis asked. "We have a very dangerous person running free. That person has murdered Marie Ritter and was responsible for the death of Lamar Hoyt. He also attacked you. Remember, Judge, you're the key witness here and the killer knows that. He tried to kill you once. You can bet he'll try again."

  Quinn thought about that. If he were attacked at home, Laura would be in danger.

  "Before you go," Quinn said, "there is something else I learned that might help you. Lamar Hoyt suspected that Junior was skimming from the mortuary business. That's why they argued at Hoyt Industries headquarters."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Karen Fargo told me last night."

  Anthony colored. "Damn it, Judge, you are not one of the Hardy Boys. Stay the hell out of this investigation.

  You hear me?"

  Laura showed the detectives to the door. Then she returned to the living room, where she found Quinn looking totally lost.

  "What should I do?" he asked as soon as Laura sat beside him.

  "If you admit to the police that you fixed Ellen Crease's case you can bank on being forced to resign from the bench and you face the additional threats of being disbarred and prosecuted criminally."

  "Maybe I don't deserve to stay on the bench. I covered up what I thought was a murder. I fixed a case."

  "You had good reasons for not going to the authorities on St. Jerome and you decided the motion to suppress the way you did to protect Ellen Crease."

  "I could have told the police about the blackmail threat, withdrawn from the case and let another judge take over."

  "Yes. You probably should have, but you didn't. We have to deal with what really happened. I guess the problem is that anything you do puts you in jeopardy. The ideal solution would be for the police to arrest the killer without your assistance."

  "Without my help they might never be able to do that."

  [3]

  Anthony dropped off Leroy Dennis at the police station, then drove to Karen Fargo's house. He got along well with the witness and he had explained to Dennis that Fargo might be more comfortable speaking to him alone.

  "I just came from talking to Judge Quinn," Anthony said when they were seated at a table in Fargo's tiny kitchen. "He said he talked to you last night, and you told him why Lamar and his son quarreled."

  "It was okay to talk to him, wasn't it?" Fargo asked anxiously. "He's a judge."

  "Oh, sure. No, you did the right thing. I just wanted to find out if there's anything else you remembered that you think is important."

  Fargo hesitated. Anthony thought that she seemed agitated.

  "Is something wrong?" he asked.

  "No, I . . ." Fargo could not meet Anthony's eye.

  "Karen, if you know something that will help in this investigation, you've got to tell me. There have been three deaths already."

  "I never lied. Everything I said to you and the grand jury was true, but . . ."

  "Yes?"

  Fargo looked desperate.

  "Is it illegal if I was paid to come to see you? Would I be breaking the law?"

  "Someone paid you to come forward?"

  Fargo told Anthony about the visit from the man with the scar.

  "How much were you paid?" Anthony asked when Fargo was through.

  "Five thousand dollars."

  "Did this man who visited you say who he was or who he was working for?"

  "No, but I saw him again."

  "Where?"

  "On the evening news."

  "Did the newscaster say his name?" Anthony asked excitedly.

  "No. He was just someone in a news story, but . .

  "Yes?"

  "It was right after Judge Quinn suppressed the evidence. That's what the story was about. And this man, the one who came here, he looked like he was with Senator Gage."

  [4]

  The courthouse was deserted when Quinn arrived. He went directly to his chambers and put up a pot of coffee. While the coffee perked, Quinn went into his office and surveyed the paperwork that was strewn across the top of his desk. Most of it was from the motions in the Crease case. Quinn went back into the anteroom and looked through the filing cabinet behind Fran Stuart's desk. By the time he had pulled the files in the other cases that had to be dealt with, the coffee was ready.

  Quinn poured himself a mug and shut the door to his office. After tuning his radio to a classical music station, the judge began organizing the documents on his desk into piles so he could return them to the file in State v. Crease with some sense of order. Quinn put a rubber band around the police reports that he had examined when he was deciding Cedric Riker's motion to exclude evidence of Martin Jablonski's criminal record. He was about to put them in the accordion file where he kept all of the documents pertaining to the motion when he noticed something that was written on the top report. Quinn slipped the report out from under the rubber band and examined it. It was the arresting officer's account of a six-year-old home burglary committed by Jablonski. His conviction for this crime had sent him to the penitentiary until his release last year. As Quinn reread the report his heartbeat accelerated. He tried to calm down so he could figure out what his discovery meant. When he was certain of his reasoning, Quinn phoned Ellen Crease.

  "Crease residence," James Allen said.

  "Mr. Allen, this is Judge Quinn. Is Senator Crease in?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Allen put Quinn on hold. When the phone came back to life, Ellen Crease was on the other end. Quinn told her about Junior's connection to Marie Ritter and what he had learned from Karen Fargo. Then Quinn explained his discovery of the police report and the conclusions he had drawn from it.

  "My God," Crease said when Quinn was finished. "This is so hard to believe."

  "But it makes sense."

  "Yes, it does."

  Crease sounded like she was in shock.

  "What do you think we should do?" Quinn asked.

  Crease thought for a moment.

  "The courthouse is only a block from the Justice Center. Wait for me in your chambers. I'm coming down. We'll go to the police together."

  While Quinn waited for Crease, he organized his files. The busywork helped him take his mind off the terrible events of the past few days. Periodically, Quinn checked the time. He thought it would take Crease about half an hour to drive downtown. Quinn had placed the call to Crease a little after three and it was already three-thirty. Quinn expected the phone to ring at any moment.

  At three-fifty, Quinn heard the door between the anteroom and the corridor open. Quinn walked to the door to his chambers. He reached for the doorknob, then stopped himself. A peephole had been installed for security purposes. Through it, Quinn saw the man who had attacked him in the garage quietly closing the door to the corridor. His face was still concealed behind a ski mask and he was carrying a large hunting knife.

  Quinn locked his door just as the man reached for the knob. Quinn saw the knob turn slowly. He backed against the desk. There was a second door in his chambers that opened onto the bench. Quinn realized that he could escape through it into the courtroom, then he could get out through the courtroom door.

  Quinn started to leave when he remembered the gun that had been left on the hood of his car. It was in his desk drawer. He had meant to turn it over to the police, but he never had the chance. Quinn raced around the desk and got the gun. He had never fired one and had only a vague idea, picked up from television and the movies, of how to shoot it, but he felt better holding the weapon.

  Quinn opened the d
oor behind the bench as quietly as possible and slipped into the courtroom. He closed the door silently and crept down the stairs from the bench to the bar of the court, praying that the person in his anteroom would not think of his escape route.

  Rain clouds had darkened the sky and very litde light came through the courtroom windows. The weak light that illuminated the courthouse corridor seeped into the courtroom. The empty benches were cloaked in shadow. Quinn hurried to the door. It was locked, but he had the key. As he stepped into the corridor, the door to his chambers opened and he and his attacker were suddenly face-to-face.

  Both men paused for a second. Then the man in the mask took a step toward Quinn. Quinn pointed his weapon down the corridor and fired. In the narrow confines of the marble hallway the gunshot roared like a cannon. Quinn's aim was terrible. The bullet ricocheted crazily as it bounced off the walls. The man ducked back into Quinn's chambers.

  The courthouse was a square. The fifth floor consisted of four corridors built around an open center. At the front of the courthouse were the elevators and broad steps that led down to the front door. Quinn wanted to run down those stairs, but that would mean passing the door to his chambers, so he headed to the hall in the rear of the courthouse. There, two enclosed staircases at either end of the hall went down to the back corridor on the first floor. If he could make it to the first floor, Quinn could run into a tiny alcove where he would find the elevator that went up to the courthouse jail. If he got that far, he could call for help through an intercom on the wall of the alcove. Armed corrections deputies would be moments away.

  Quinn took off. As he rounded the corner, he heard pounding footsteps racing after him. Quinn flung open the door to the near stairwell and leaped down the steps. He slipped on the third-floor landing and slid down half a flight before checking himself. In the second it took Quinn to regain his feet, he strained to hear his pursuer and thought he heard the sound of feet descending.

  Quinn hit the bottom stair. The corridor in the back of the courthouse was dimly lit. He held his gun in front of him. His stomach was cramped and his breathing grew ragged. His senses were intensified. All he had to do was make it to the end of the hall.

  Quinn sprinted for the alcove. The moment he reached it the door to the other stairwell flew open and the man in the ski mask ran into the hall. Quinn had been certain that he had heard footsteps in the stairwell he had just descended. Could there be two people hunting him? Before he could consider the question, the masked man sprang. Quinn backpedaled into the alcove and raised his gun, which was halfway up when the knife struck it. The impact jarred the gun and the knife loose and sent Quinn stumbling backward. He tripped on his own feet and fell heavily to the floor. His head smacked against the wall. Quinn's eyes wouldn't focus. He shook his head. When his vision returned, Quinn saw that the masked man was holding the gun.

  Time slowed to a crawl and a feeling of overwhelming calm flooded through Quinn as he accepted his death. He saw the attacker sight down the barrel of the gun. His eyes locked on Quinn's. Then there was an explosion. The assailant's knees buckled, the gun fell and the front of the ski mask dampened with blood. There was a second shot. Quinn tried to push his way through the wall. The attacker collapsed at Quinn's feet and Ellen Crease stepped into the alcove holding a smoking .38-caliber revolver.

  The jail elevator opened and two men stepped into the alcove. They were dressed in the light green shirt and dark green pants worn by the Multnomah County Corrections deputies. The first person out was Sergeant Art Bradford, a huge man with a marine crew cut who had been in Quinn's court guarding prisoners on many occasions. Clyde Fellers, the second deputy, was a black man with massive arms, a thick neck and a gut who had played football for Portland State. Bradford and Fellers stared at the dead man. Then they stared at Quinn, who was slumped on a bench outside the alcove.

  "The judge is okay. He's just shaken up," Ellen Crease said.

  Quinn looked up. He was pale and spoke softly.

  "The dead man attacked me in the parking garage two days ago. He just broke into my chambers and chased me downstairs. Senator Crease shot him."

  "I was supposed to meet Judge Quinn in his chambers," Crease explained. "I took the elevator up to the fifth floor. Someone raced around the far corner of the hall just as I came into the corridor where the judge's courtroom is located. No one was in the judge's chambers, so I ran down the back stairs looking for him."

  Crease stopped her narrative. She looked as bad as Quinn.

  "I had to shoot. He was aiming at the judge."

  "Someone should call Portland Homicide," Quinn said. "Ask them to send Detectives Lou Anthony and Leroy Dennis over here. This is connected to one of their cases. And make sure that Anthony and Dennis are told that I know who murdered Lamar Hoyt."

  "You can turn him over now," Dr. Marilyn Kinsey, the assistant medical examiner, said to Sergeant Bradford. Quinn, Detectives Anthony and Dennis, Ellen Crease and the other people in the group surrounding the dead man waited expectantly as Bradford rolled the corpse onto its back. Kinsey knelt down and slowly peeled back the ski mask.

  "Looks like you were right," Anthony told Quinn.

  The judge looked down on the lifeless face of Jack Brademas.

  "Let's go up to your courtroom so you can show us that report," Dennis suggested.

  Anthony, Dennis, Crease and Quinn went up to the fifth floor. Quinn preceded everyone into his courtroom and switched on the lights. While the others sat at the counsel table that Garrett and Crease had used during the hearing, Quinn went into his chambers through the door behind the bench and retrieved the document that had cleared up the case for him.

  "Why don't you tell us how you figured out that Jack Brademas was involved, Judge?" Dennis said as soon as Quinn laid the police report of Martin Jablonski's home burglary on the table. The report was the one he had just finished reading last Sunday when the police detective called to see if Quinn could provide information about the disappearance of Andrea Chapman. It was only while Quinn waited for the police to arrive at the courthouse that the judge realized that the man on the line could not have been a police detective. The incident on St. Jerome had been staged. Andrea Chapman never existed and Marie Ritter did not disappear on St. Jerome. The call from the phony detective was part of the plan to unnerve him so that he would be easy prey for the blackmailer. The caller had probably been Jack Brademas.

  "This is the police report of the arrest that sent Martin Jablonski to prison this last time," Quinn said. "This was the crime for which he was serving time until he was paroled last year. It was a brutal home invasion. A nighttime burglary accompanied by a violent assault on the homeowners. Take a look at the report."

  Anthony and Dennis studied the handwritten report. They looked confused.

  "I don't see ... ," Anthony started. Then he looked as if he had been shot. He pointed at the bottom of the report where the arresting officer had signed his name.

  "J. Brademas," Dennis said out loud.

  "Exacdy," Quinn said. "Brademas knew Jablonski. He arrested him. I think he hired Jablonski to break into the Hoyt mansion and kill Lamar Hoyt and Senator Crease. If Jablonski was caught later, the crime would fit his M. O., but Brademas was probably going to murder Jablonski after Jablonski committed the double murder at the estate."

  "I've been sick ever since Judge Quinn told me about the report," Crease said. "Jack was my friend. I helped him get his job and Lamar treated him very well. Why did he do it?"

  "I think I can answer that, Senator," Lou Anthony said. "Your husband suspected Junior of embezzling from the mortuary business. He had Jack Brademas investigate. My guess is that Brademas went to Junior and made a proposal. He would arrange to have you and your husband murdered for a cut of the estate. The plan must have looked great on paper. Junior had no ties to Jablonski and Jablonski was known for this type of violent crime. But neither Brademas nor Junior counted on you killing Jablonski."

  "Our problem now wi
ll be proving that Junior was Brademas's partner."

  Dennis stood up. "You people have been through enough for one night. Wait here and Til see if there's any reason to keep you further."

  Dennis left and Crease slumped in her seat. She looked exhausted;

  "I still can't believe that Jack was behind all this. I've known him for years."

  "If Junior confesses, maybe you can salvage your election campaign," Quinn said in an attempt to cheer up Crease.

  "Winning the primary seems less and less important to me, Dick. I've lost Lamar. Now I find out I've been betrayed by someone I really trusted. Besides, I'm so far down in the polls . . ."

  Crease smiled sadly and shook her head. The courtroom door opened and Dennis returned.

  "You can go," the detective said, "but you'll have to run the gauntlet. Someone notified the press."

  Quinn walked toward the courtroom door. Crease started to follow him, but Anthony stopped her and said, "Wait a minute, Ellen. I know I put you through hell by arresting you."

  "I don't hold it against you. You thought you were doing the right thing."

  "I did, but I might have cost you the campaign, so I figure I owe you one. I need your promise that you won't reveal where you got this information."

  Crease gave it.

  "Karen Fargo was paid five thousand dollars to tell her story to me."

  "Who did it?"

  Anthony repeated Fargo's description. As soon as he mentioned the scar, Crease said, "That's Ryan Clark, Benjamin Gage's A. A., and he doesn't spit without Gage's say-so. If he bribed Fargo, Gage is behind it."

  Part Four

  Political Necessity

  Chapter 23.

  [1]

  Henry Orchard popped the videotape into the VCR and pressed the Play button on the remote. Ellen Crease drew in smoke from her Cuban Cohiba Panatela. The anchor on the evening news suddenly appeared on the forty-eight-inch television screen in her home entertainment center.

  "This is the Saturday night news report on Channel 6, but it's representative of the stories that the other local channels carried as the lead story last night," Crease's campaign manager told the senator. "The networks used local feeds."