I didn’t have a good reason to keep secret the four photographs that had fallen out of the book. I should have told Jarkowski about them. He was the detective. I was not. Deep down, however, I think I wanted to be the hero who put the puzzle pieces together. As irrational as it sounds, I believed I might find redemption in Harry Meyer’s death. If I could find who killed him, I’d prove my value. Maybe I wouldn’t be “The Kitten” anymore. My good deed would absolve all sins. I’d be allowed to return from exile.
“Any valuables stolen?” Jarkowski asked.
“Not that I know of.” I thought about my conversation with Metina and decided to share it. “When I spoke to the reporter, she asked me if her articles might have something to do with Harry’s murder. She also asked me about Marsh Terry.”
Jarkowski considered the information, likely deciding for himself how much he wanted to share with me. “It’s certainly possible,” he said. “But Marsh Terry was in New York at the time, meeting with a bunch of bankers. So then we’d be talking about a hit job or something.” He shook his head. “I don’t see that. Happens in the movies, but not so much in real life.”
“She also made suggestions about the contracts between the county and Marsh Terry’s company,” I said. “Like they were improper.”
“That’s interesting.” Jarkowski filed the information away. It was as if he already knew. “Well, keep looking.” He got up from his chair and walked toward the door, then stopped in the doorway and turned around. “Did Judge Meyer ever tell you how he pays for that place where he’s got his wife?”
“Walker Assisted Living?”
He nodded. “That’s it. I was talking to a buddy, and he said those places cost a fortune.”
Jarkowski didn’t make the connection between the contracts and Harry’s finances, but it was certainly implied. “He never mentioned it,” I said, which was the truth. “Maybe Harry had insurance or something.”
The morning calendar was filled with truants, kids who missed an excessive amount of school without a valid excuse. Although the law allowed only six unexcused absences per year, this morning’s truants had anywhere from seventy-five to a hundred and fifty absences. These kids, in short, didn’t go to school, ever.
Phone calls from teachers and the principal didn’t work. Social workers and even the county attorney had tried to intervene, but that didn’t improve their attendance. The kids continued to skip school, so now they were in the court system. Somehow a judge was going to fix a problem that nobody else, with better relationships and better training, was able to fix.
It made perfect sense.
I worked quickly through the docket, dispatching pithy inspirational quotes along with threats of being removed from the home and being placed in foster care or an inpatient, residential facility. Parents were informed that they could be criminally charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor and put in jail, even though they never were. And the rest were ordered to get an updated chemical health or mental health evaluation and take their medications.
This was what the justice system had come to: hauling parents and kids to court, making them wait all morning, and then ordering fourteen-year-old girls to take their antidepressants and sixteen-year-old boys to stop smoking weed and playing video games all day.
Justice.
Karen handed me a stack of orders to sign. The orders reflected the things that I said at each hearing. All of them were computer generated after a few text blocks were added, depending on the circumstances. There were about thirty text blocks of boilerplate legal and factual findings, and I’ve never encountered a case that required a new one to be written.
I signed the orders and handed them back to Karen.
“Thank you, Judge.”
The afternoon was more of the same. After I had heard all the cases and signed another stack of orders, I went back to my chambers and responded to various e-mails, mostly by deleting them. When I glanced at the clock on my bookshelf, it was already four in the afternoon.
I tried to think of additional work, but I drew a blank. I’m sure there was an order to review, new appellate decisions to read, or administrative duties to attend to. I simply wasn’t motivated enough to seek them out.
Ever since Jarkowski left that morning, Harry had been on my mind, and there was only one person who I could talk to about him. I loved Nikki, but she wasn’t going to be able to tell me about the photographs, Harry’s finances, and how the county selects its service providers.
The person I needed was Helen Vox, and I figured that she might feel the same way about me. We’d both seen Harry’s violent end, and we were both now under fire at work, misunderstood and questioned. Even if Helen couldn’t provide answers, we could grieve together.
I waited for Helen at a picnic table on Adams Point. Not far from the courthouse, it was the largest park on Lake Merritt, with a boathouse, an elaborate bonsai garden, and a fairyland for children.
It was nice to be outside, though the air was crisp and I had to keep my hands in my pockets. The park was active. Runners, walkers, and kite flyers appeared to outnumber the homeless for once. As the late afternoon transitioned to the evening, that would change.
Helen arrived a half hour after I’d called. I almost didn’t recognize her. She was dressed casually in jeans, a sweater, and a knee-length coat. She noticed the look on my face and explained.
“I’m on vacation.” She forced a smile.
I stood up and gave her a little hug. “Well, that’s good. You look relaxed.”
“Thanks. It’s sort of good, sort of not good . . .” She hesitated, as if weighing how much detail to provide. “My boss strongly encouraged me to take some time off.” She looked at the ground, shaking her head. “I had hundreds of vacation hours in the bank, and he told me that I should use some of them and think about retirement.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Hadn’t heard.”
“Intellectually I don’t blame them. I messed up, but it still hurts.” We began walking along the path that circled the lake. “Been at that office for over twenty years. I’m union, so they can’t fire me very easily, but they can move me out of the child protection division. I can be sent to the basement and tasked with contract review until I die. Maybe it’s just time to retire.”
“Funny you should mention retirement,” I said. “Because I’ve been thinking about retirement myself.”
“Let me guess,” Helen said. “Nancy Johns and Chief Judge Karls want you to take a break and possibly move out of child protection.”
“How’d you know?”
“Because they had been trying to get Harry to do that for years.” She stopped and watched a man try to untangle his kite from a nearby tree. “It has to do with staffing and performance metrics. They don’t like how slowly the cases move through the child dependency system, and I think Chief Karls didn’t like how prominent Harry had become. I think he was jealous.”
Nikki was working another overnight at the hospital, so dinner tonight would be with Helen. We decided on a tiny Ethiopian place that probably sat fifteen people at most and where we weren’t likely to be seen by anybody we knew. Ethiopian food was an acquired taste. I’d never seen another lawyer or judge eat there, which was one of the restaurant’s greatest selling points. It made me smile just thinking of Chief Karls ripping off a piece of the spongy injera bread, scooping up the goat meat with it, and trying to get everything in his mouth without sullying his silk tie.
About halfway through dinner, I passed her the four photographs I’d found. “These are what I mentioned on the phone. I found these in Harry’s library.”
She flipped through the photographs quickly once, then she took her time, studying each one. When she was finished, Helen looked up, her expression a combination of disappointment and confusion.
“I’m sorry, Jim.” She handed back the photographs. “I’ve never seen these before. Don’t recognize those kids, either.”
“Harry never men
tioned them?”
“Never.”
“OK.” I put the photographs away. “Thanks for looking.”
She nodded as our waitress stopped by, refilled our drinks, then disappeared. “If I had to guess, I think they were probably all foster kids, probably aged out of the system now.”
“Why?”
“The tears at the top of the photos,” she said. “All the photographs had those tears.” She took a drink of her soda and then, since it was clear I wasn’t following her, explained. “Based on the age of those photographs, it was back when we had paper files. We didn’t shift to electronic files until 2005. Back then, a clerk would plop this big thick file down on the bench in front of the judge. Harry started making the social workers provide photographs of the kids involved in each of the child protection cases. He made the court clerks staple them to the inside of the folder.”
Helen smiled at the memory. “Harry didn’t want the judges, including himself, to forget why we were doing this. That the cases weren’t just a stack of paper. They were real kids. He wanted a reminder. My guess is that he tore those photos out of a file for some reason.”
“That sounds like Harry,” I said. “But why these?”
She shook her head. “Who knows?”
On our way back to Adams Point and the courthouse, Helen pointed out a new hipster bar, a former auto-repair shop that now featured reclaimed wood tables and brick walls accented with shiny corrugated sheet metal. Some urban lumberjacks and women with various piercings and tattoos sat out front sipping craft cocktails.
Helen’s eyes lit up. “I think I see a pool table.”
“You want to play pool?”
She nodded. She didn’t seem happy or excited, more like somebody who just found out she was going to die in thirty days and wanted to do something spontaneous and out of character. Why not? The end is near.
“Just don’t start a fight while we’re in there, OK?”
She smiled. “You never know.”
The twentysomethings watched us as we entered and walked toward the pool table. For a moment, they looked suspicious and even confused by our presence, but they didn’t say anything. Everything was cool. Perhaps they figured that Helen and I were just being ironic.
Helen dug into her purse. “Here are some quarters. You rack while I get a couple beers.”
“I’m starting to get worried about you.”
“Don’t waste your energy.” Helen smirked. “I’m too old to have somebody worry about me. I’m on the cusp of retirement, you know?”
As she went to the bar, I put the quarters in the slots, and the balls released with a crash. I found the plastic rack and placed the balls inside. By the time I was done, she was back with two Metropolis lagers.
She set them down on a tall table. “These were recommended.”
I looked at the bartender, a skinny man with a white T-shirt and handlebar mustache. When our eyes met, he smiled and emitted a little laugh. I think he thought we were on a date.
“Are you going to break or what?” she asked.
“Awful sassy, Ms. Vox.”
“I’ve always been sassy, Judge Thompson.” She handed me a pool cue and little blue cube of chalk. “Let’s get to it.”
We played the first game without saying much, but by the second game and after another round of beer, both of us were more relaxed. I told her about my off-the-record conversation with Benji Metina the night before and my conversation with Detective Jarkowski that morning.
In return, Helen told me about giving the police a statement.
I was surprised. “You didn’t have an attorney?”
“Why would I need an attorney?” She sank the six, then moved onto the number one. Helen lined up the shot and sent the yellow ball off the far rail and almost into the side pocket. Even though she missed the shot, she was a much better pool player than I had thought. I wondered what else I didn’t know about her.
I took a sip of beer and evaluated where the striped balls were situated on the table. “I think I’d want an attorney, that’s all. Sort of a safety blanket.” I hit the cue ball into a clump of balls on the side, hoping for some slop. Nothing sank.
“Well,” she said, “you haven’t had an attorney when you’ve talked with the detective. So why should I?” She’d gained confidence as the game went on. She bent over the table, pulled back, and knocked another ball into the corner. Then she went for another and sank that as well.
“You’re making it look easy.”
She looked up at me with a smile. “Nothing is easy.” She lined up another shot and gently edged a ball into the side pocket. She was about to hit another when she stopped and looked at me with sad eyes. “Can I ask you a terrible question?”
“Terrible?” I leaned back against the wall. “What do you mean?”
“Forget it.” She leaned over, pulled her cue back, and hit a clump of balls in the far corner of the table. Nothing went in.
She sighed, then retreated as I walked up to the table to figure out my best shot. Unlike Helen, I had plenty of balls remaining on the table to choose from. “What is it?” I asked. “Go ahead.”
Helen took a sip of beer as she shook her head. “It’s going to make me sound awful.”
“Awful?” I stopped and looked at her. “What is it?”
“Harry’s will,” she said. “Have you read it?”
“It’s been a while,” I said. “I have it, but I haven’t read it recently. With the funeral and everything else, it hasn’t been a priority.”
Helen nodded. “That’s fair.” She started to say something but stopped. “I just . . . I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Harry and I had been together for almost ten years.” I could see her mind drift away, sorting through the memories. “I know that I wasn’t Mary Pat. I wasn’t his wife. I knew going into it that I would never be the love of his life.” She looked at the ground. “But since he died, I’ve just wondered whether, you know, he remembered me or something.”
“Like how?”
“I don’t know.” She pulled out a chair and sat down. “We had plans, you know? We talked about leaving here after retiring, traveling, maybe doing some consulting.” She finished her beer. “I guess . . . I told you I never thought of myself as the other woman. I thought maybe Harry would show that in some way.”
By the fourth game, we were pals. I could now see why Harry had fallen for her. Helen’s moment of self-pity had passed. She was tough, but you could tell she had heart and a wicked sense of humor.
“Jarkowski wanted me to look at Harry’s financials.” I was now sitting on one of the nearby stools and slightly intoxicated. “Know anything about that?”
Helen shook her head. “That wasn’t really something we talked about. Obviously we weren’t married, so paying bills and the mortgage wasn’t really something we shared.” Helen lined up her next shot. “Any idea where Jarkowski is going with all this?”
“I have no idea.” I watched as Helen went on another three-ball run, sinking one after the next. Her game had not deteriorated at all. In fact, I think she was getting better the more she drank. “I think he’s just fishing for information because they have no leads.”
When she eventually missed, she stepped back, and I walked up to the pool table and began to line up a shot. I hit the cue ball, and I watched as it completely missed the green striped ball where I had been aiming. I bowed my head in shame. I was getting waxed in public by a sixty-three-year-old woman.
“Well”—Helen stepped back up to the table—“Harry wasn’t a gambler, played by the rules, and I don’t remember him ever even talking about money. It just didn’t motivate him. He had a house and a comfortable life. I don’t think he cared about getting rich or having more. He loved what he did.”
“What about paying for Mary Pat? Jarkowski was wondering how he was paying for that.” I thought about the cost of taking care of her at the Walker. “Aren’t those places ten or twenty thousand a month?”
<
br /> “I don’t know. I assumed they both had long-term care insurance. Harry once asked if I had some, thought I should get insurance just to be safe.”
“The reporter asked about Marsh and the government contracts,” I said. “She wondered if that had anything to do with what happened to Harry.”
I noticed her body stiffen. “Of course she did.” Helen looked at the pool table, then stood up and looked at me. “I’ll tell you what I told my boss.” Her tone had turned sharp, defiant. “Everything we did was done in the open and followed county procedures. Just ask Metina—I gave her box after box of public requests for proposals, bids, contracts, and evaluations. Marsh and Harry’s friendship was no secret, and so the county was especially careful to wall Harry off from the selection process and review. It was all documented and approved.”
Helen turned her attention back to the pool table. She bent over, lined up her shot, and knocked the eight hard into the corner pocket, putting me out of my misery. “To spin that into some elaborate conspiracy is crazy.”
The temperature had dropped another ten degrees, so our pace was faster on the way back to Adams Point. As we got closer, I thought about Peter Thill and his odd courtroom behavior and vague threats. “Did Harry ever talk about his cases with you?”
“Believe it or not, we tried to avoid talking about specific cases,” she said. “But we talked about work. I won’t deny that.”
“What about death threats?”
“Oh, that.” She chuckled. “That’s part of the job.”
“Anything specific?”
“Not that I can recall,” she said. “Jarkowski asked me the same thing, and I told him that I couldn’t remember anybody. Harry tried to be tough, like those things didn’t affect him. He’d say something like, ‘Looks like I have another one after me.’ And that would be it.”
“Do you think any of his former law clerks would know?”
Helen shrugged. “Maybe.”
We arrived at the picnic table where we had met a few hours earlier. I was about to thank Helen for meeting with me and for the conversation when she jumped in first.
Good Intentions Page 10