All nodded in agreement as Governor Lamp declared, “Never again.” He must have sensed the emotion in the room and that this was likely the only coherent thing he had said during the press conference, so he repeated the line even louder. “Never again.” Then the people applauded.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sunday was a waste without Nikki there to ensure that I did something productive, and Monday morning came quick. She squeezed my shoulder and turned on the lights. She had just gotten home from the hospital after working all day on Sunday as well as the overnight shift. “You going in today?”
“Do I have to?” I rolled over and opened my eyes. She stood there with a cup of coffee, and I pushed myself up. “The nectar of life.” I pointed at the mug, confirming that it was for me, and took it. “What time is it?”
“A little after eight.”
My eyes widened as I looked at the clock for confirmation. “I overslept.”
“Yes, you did,” she said. “You must have partied pretty hard yesterday without me.”
“You weren’t supposed to know about that.” I played coy, both of us knowing that there wasn’t any party, just a depressed guy surfing the Internet and allowing his personal hygiene to deteriorate as others discussed his incompetence.
I took a sip and put the coffee cup on the nightstand. I forced myself to pull the sheets away, exposing myself to the cold, and swung my feet over the bed’s edge.
“You gonna make it?”
I looked at her, my mind growing sharper. “I think so.”
“It’s a miracle.” She turned and walked back to the living room. “Did you find anything interesting?”
“Online?” I said, raising my voice a bit so she could hear me in the other room. I wasn’t going to tell her about the fifty times I replayed the governor’s press conference while I was supposed to be reviewing Harry Meyer’s electronic accounts and bank statements. “Not really. It was all pretty regular. Harry bought groceries and paid his utilities just like everybody else.”
I got to the courthouse late. I’d like to say it was a little after nine thirty, but it was actually much closer to ten. The courtroom was full of lawyers, clients, and other interested family members. They had been noticed to arrive at court for their hearing about the time I was still waking up. I checked my watch again. I hoped the time was wrong, but it wasn’t. Then I hung my jacket on the coatrack, grabbed my robe, and hustled to the courtroom.
Karen was waiting for me in the narrow hallway that ran behind the courtrooms.
“People aren’t too mad, are they?”
“They’ve all had a chance to talk, so that’s good.” She turned and went into the courtroom, and I was alone in the hallway. It was like being backstage before the curtain rose. The performance would soon begin, whether or not the actors, including me, were ready.
I closed my eyes and recited a brief prayer that Harry had taught me on my first day. Lord, give me the vision to see the good. Give me the patience to listen. Give me the knowledge to do what’s right, for whatever I do is done to the best of my ability.
As I finished and was about to enter the courtroom, a bailiff gently tapped me on the shoulder and coughed. “Excuse me, Your Honor.”
I turned. “Yes?”
“Can I talk to you about one of the people who are out there?”
“I’m running late.”
“It’ll be brief.”
I looked around. “You want to talk here or someplace else?”
“Here is fine.” He looked at his sheet of paper, listing cases scheduled for hearing that morning. He flipped to the third page. A name had been circled. “It’s the dad.” He pointed at a highlighted line on the calendar.
“What’s the case?”
“In the matter of the children of Tanya Neal,” he said. “State filed a petition to terminate. Looks like this is the first admit-deny hearing.”
The name kicked around in my head. It sounded familiar, and then I remembered the woman with her puffy jacket. Procedurally, she was nearing the end. Child dependency cases were a two-step dance. The first part removed the children from the home and placed them in foster care. This triggered the government’s obligation to provide services and to try to reunite the family. If the agency believed those efforts were unsuccessful, they took the second step, which was a legal petition to terminate the parent’s rights.
The agency’s attorney, Sylvia Norgaard, had told the court that they were going to file the paperwork, but I was surprised the termination petition came so fast. “Is she here?”
“Don’t know,” he said, “but the father, guy named Peter Thill, is out in the lobby, pretty fired up. The social worker says he was making some threats yesterday. He wants his kids back, today, and if he doesn’t get them back, says he just might hurt somebody.”
“Pretty vague.”
The bailiff nodded. “That’s true, but”—he removed some folded pieces of paper from his back pocket—“if you take a look at his social media posts, you’ll see why we’re concerned.”
I started reading the posts, mostly typical stuff, but then there were links to articles about the child protection industrial complex and conspiracy theories about social workers getting paid to snatch kids and sell them to parents wanting to adopt.
I turned the page and saw that he’d posted the link to the San Francisco Chronicle article about Gregory Ports. Beneath the article, Thill wrote: “My judge.”
I looked at the bailiff. “You get a warrant for all this?”
He shook his head. “The social worker said it wasn’t necessary. It’s all public. Idiot doesn’t understand the privacy settings.”
“Or doesn’t care.” I looked at the final sheet of paper. Thill’s last status update was a picture of a gun, box of bullets, and roll of duct tape lying on a bed. Above the photograph, Thill wrote, “Ready to go.”
I handed the papers back to the bailiff. “What’s your plan?”
“We made security aware. He had to go through some extra screens, in addition to the metal detectors. So we’re confident he’s unarmed. And we’ve got an extra deputy in the courtroom.”
I nodded, looking over the bailiff’s shoulder toward the courtroom door. “Are you going to charge him with anything?”
“Nothing to charge him with yet,” he said.
“Really?”
“That’s what the prosecutor says.” The bailiff took the copies of the Facebook pages from me. “He got a good talking-to from us. He said he was just blowing off steam, you know?”
“I guess,” I said. “Tell the clerks to call it first. I want to get him out of here.”
The tables were more crowded than usual, because all four children were in attendance. Plus, there was the Alameda County social worker and her attorney, Sylvia Norgaard; the guardian ad litem, Cherelle Williams; Sophia Delgado; and Peter Thill with his new court-appointed attorney.
Benji Metina sat in the back. Her presence unnerved me. Our eyes met. My jaw clenched, and I forgot what I was going to say. My mind was blank, and my mouth went dry. Instead of showing her that I could handle the job, I was “The Kitten.” I looked around the room, lost. The silence grew more awkward. Perhaps only seconds passed, but it felt like hours. Doubt filled me. Maybe I wasn’t suited for the job. Maybe I should take Chief Karls’s advice and transfer to another division.
Karen saw it all and saved me. “Judge,” she whispered. “Ready?”
I turned to her and nodded. Karen called the case and gaveled the hearing to a start. The tension was higher than usual, and the presence of the extra bailiff did not help. If my mind wasn’t going to allow complex thought, I decided to start simply. “Good morning, everybody.” I kept my voice deliberately soft, ignoring Benji Metina and finding a rhythm. I tried to appear calm as my eyes met each of the people in attendance. The kids already seemed bored, but Peter Thill was wound tight.
Although I’d usually allow the county and the tribe to go first, I decided t
o start with Thill’s attorney. “Mr. Thill, I see you have an attorney sitting next to you.”
Bob Finley rose up from his chair. He was a veteran attorney who could politely be described as weathered. Finley had represented parents in child dependency and termination hearings for decades. His thinning hair was bleached and always three inches too long. He had a narrow thumb ring and two large gold rings on each hand and looked more like an aging rock star than an attorney, but Finley knew what he was doing. I figured giving him a chance to speak right away might defuse the situation.
“Thank you, Your Honor. I’m Robert Finley, and I’ve been appointed to represent Mr. Thill in this matter.”
Thill looked like he was going to spring out of his seat, but Bob Finley gave him a harsh look. “My client enters a denial to the petition to terminate his parental rights, and we’d like to set this matter on for a pretrial.”
I looked at Karen, who announced the date of the pretrial hearing.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yes, Your Honor.” Finley looked down at his client. It was clear that he was already annoyed by Peter Thill, even though he’d only represented him for less than ten minutes. I could tell that Finley didn’t want to make the request he was about to make, but it was an effort to build his relationship with Thill. “My client would like his children returned to him immediately. Says he has some housing lined up and that the kids want to be with him.”
“When you say lined up, does he have housing, or is he looking for housing?”
“He is currently staying at a friend’s house.”
I shook my head. “The request is denied. I don’t know much of anything about you, Mr. Thill, since you’ve been incarcerated during most of these proceedings. Nobody from the county has come out to look at your home, and the fact that you’re just staying there for a little while isn’t stable enough to justify the disruption of your children’s current foster care placement.”
Thill mumbled under his breath. “I need a real attorney.” He stared at Bob Finley with the same hatred he’d directed at me. “This whole thing is a setup.” Thill slammed his hand down on the table, and the bailiffs moved in closer. Each bailiff looked at me and waited.
“Mr. Thill.” My voice went even softer, forcing Thill to lean toward me in order to hear what I was going to say. “I know you’re upset, but I can’t send the kids home with you today.”
Thill pointed at Finley. “He told me to just sign away the rights to my kids.” Thill shook his head, then looked at his kids, all of whom were on the edges of their seats. “I ain’t gonna do it. I love them. They love me. They want to be with me, not in no foster homes. I need a lawyer who’s actually gonna stop this.”
“If you want a trial, you will have a trial, but I can’t reassign you a new attorney. His job is to give you honest advice in private—sometimes advice you don’t want to hear—but then be your advocate at any trial.”
“I love you, Dad!” the younger boy, Bobby, shouted. The older boy, Damien, said the same thing, and then the teenage girls, Neisha and Kayla Neal, joined. It was a full rebellion.
“I just want to be with you, Dad,” Kayla said.
Thill turned away, looking at the floor, his hands balled into fists.
“Why don’t we take a break,” I said. “The attorneys can come see me.”
The attorneys dutifully filed into my chambers. When the chairs were filled, Karen rolled in a third. I looked at Thill’s attorney. I liked Bob Finley. He was a good advocate, but he wasn’t a sucker. I had no doubt that he had told Thill to voluntarily terminate his parental rights given his violent history and convictions for criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping. It was unlikely Thill was going to win, and there was little reason to waste everyone’s time.
Getting to the point, I asked, “Any chance he’ll cool off?”
Finley shook his head. “Don’t think so, Judge.” He looked at the other attorneys, then back at me. “Plus—and I don’t say this lightly—I don’t really feel comfortable meeting with him in private anymore.” Finley didn’t provide any more detail, and he didn’t have to.
“I understand,” I said. “The bailiffs have expressed concerns about comments he’s made in the courthouse, and the social worker has also seen threats posted on Mr. Thill’s Facebook page.” I paused. “Of course I want everybody to get home safe at the end of the day, but we have to go forward.”
I turned to Sophia Delgado. “Have you heard anything from Ms. Neal? Do you know where she is?”
Delgado shook her head. “No calls back. I checked the jails, nothing.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Ordinarily she’d be in default and the case would be over, but since the father is back in the picture, I’d like to enter a denial and see if she shows up at the next hearing. There’s really no prejudice—”
Karen Fields stuck her head in. “Excuse me, Judge, but I think we have a problem.”
I looked at the attorneys. Each of them seemed as surprised as I was. Then to Karen I said, “What is it now?”
“The two older girls,” Karen said. “They told the social worker that they needed to go to the bathroom, and . . . looks like they ran.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Thill smirked through the rest of the hearing. He basked in the chaos that everyone knew, but could not prove, he had created. My guess was that Thill and his girls had arranged a place to meet. The girls had not spontaneously run. The whole thing had been planned, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
I looked to the back of the courtroom. Benji Metina sat, waiting. Her little notepad was open, and she was ready to write down every word I said.
“Mr. Thill.” I looked at him. “If Neisha or Kayla contact you or you learn where they are, then I order you to contact the social worker assigned to the case immediately and turn them over to child protection. Do you understand?”
“I do, Your Honor.” He smiled. “I’ll get right on that.”
“I’m sure you will,” I said before Karen Fields banged the gavel down a few times and called the next case. Thill got up from his chair and walked out of the courtroom with a strut. I knew that my order was meaningless. I could issue dozens of orders citing legal precedents and laws every day, but they were just pieces of paper. If a person didn’t care, it didn’t matter, and Thill didn’t give a damn about what I said or did.
Since I got started late, there wasn’t much time for lunch between the morning and afternoon calendars. Karen brought me a sandwich while I sifted through e-mails, although I didn’t ask her to, and she wasn’t required to feed me. It might have been pity.
I can’t imagine that she enjoyed her weekend, either. It couldn’t have been fun to have family and friends ask her if she was really working for the judge in the news, the one responsible for a dead boy. It’s not something young lawyers wanted on their résumé.
Thirty more families were processed in the afternoon. Some parents edged closer to reunifying with their children. Others were stuck. Each was given a hearing and had to sit around a table as outsiders discussed the intimate details of their lives and struggles.
It was after five o’clock when the afternoon calendar finally ended. The institutional players had already started packing up their laptops and files as the clerk announced the date of the next review hearing and an Order to Appear hummed out of the court’s laser printer.
I left for my chambers. As I got out my key, I noticed a picture somebody had taped to the door: a gray kitten with white fur on its chest with little black stripes. Its ears were folded back and down, and it looked up with sad eyes. Below the picture was the meme: “You Eated My Cookie.”
Great, I thought. Gossip about “The Kitten” has now escalated into teenage bullying. I’m sure somebody is having a good laugh. It’s junior high school all over again.
I removed the picture, unlocked the door, and walked back to my office after hanging my black robe on the coatrack
. Mail needed to be read. Orders sat in my “To Be Signed” basket, and a half dozen other items sat in my “To Be Reviewed” basket. Without even logging on to my computer, I knew there were likely twenty or thirty new e-mail messages, even though I had managed to get caught up on them during my brief lunch break.
I ignored it all. I placed the kitten picture on my desk and walked over to the window. Below me, some birds fought over a stale sandwich that hadn’t quite made it into the garbage. My mind ground through its daily purge. This was the part of the job that nobody talked about: the decompression. In the public speeches and even among friends, being a Superior Court judge was always an honor or challenging, but rewarding. Rarely did judges admit that the honors and rewards were few.
The day-to-day life of a judge consisted of pushing dozens of cases through a system. The happiest judges were the oblivious ones. They were the intellect workers, not the intellectuals—smart enough to get the job done but lacking curiosity about the system itself. Ignorance was bliss, and at times I wished I were one of them. Judge Harry Meyer, however, hadn’t allowed that.
Karen interrupted my trip down the mental rabbit hole. “Are you OK?” She was in the doorway. I didn’t know how long she’d been watching me.
“I’m fine,” I said, but I wasn’t convincing. “Come on in and have a seat.”
Karen nodded and did as instructed while I walked around my desk and sat down. I waited for her to get settled in the chair across from me. “Karen,” I said, “if you want to look for a new job, I wouldn’t blame you.”
She shook her head. “I’m not looking for a new job. I just started this one.”
I could tell that the thought had crossed her mind, and I’d be worried if it hadn’t. “Well, if you do, I’ll give you a good recommendation. Not sure what it’d be worth, but I won’t stand in your way.” I picked up the cat picture and slid it across the desk. “What do you think? Somebody taped it to our door.”
Good Intentions Page 8