The Jodi Picoult Collection #3

by Jodi Picoult

  This being a Wednesday, he was at the Golden Dragon, waiting for his take-out order to be filled. He watched May ferry it into the kitchen (where on earth did someone buy a wok that big, he always wondered) and turned his attention to the television over the bar, where the Sox game was just beginning. A woman was sitting alone, tearing a fringe around the edge of a cocktail napkin as she waited for the bartender to bring her her drink.

  She had her back to him, but Patrick was a detective, and there were certain things he could figure out just from this side of her. Like the fact that she had a great ass, for one, and that her hair needed to be taken out of that librarian’s bun so that it could wave around her shoulders. He watched the bartender (a Korean named Spike, which always struck Patrick as funny after the first Tsingtao) opening up a bottle of pinot noir, and he filed away this information, too: she was classy. Nothing with a little paper umbrella in it, not for her.

  He sidled up behind the woman and handed Spike a twenty. “My treat,” Patrick said.

  She turned, and for a fraction of a second, Patrick stood rooted to the spot, wondering how this mystery woman could possibly have Judge Cormier’s face.

  It reminded Patrick of being in high school and seeing a friend’s mom from a distance across a parking lot and automatically checking her out as a Potential Hot Babe until he realized who it actually was. The judge plucked the twenty-dollar bill out of Spike’s hand and gave it back to Patrick. “You can’t buy me a drink,” she said, and she pulled some cash out of her pocketbook and handed it to the bartender.

  Patrick sat down on the stool beside her. “Well, then,” he said. “You can buy me one.”

  “I don’t think so.” She glanced around the restaurant. “I really don’t think we ought to be seen talking.”

  “The only witnesses are the koi in the pond by the cash register. I think you’re safe,” Patrick said. “Besides, we’re just talking. We’re not talking about the case. You do still remember how to make conversation outside a courtroom, don’t you?”

  She picked up her glass of wine. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

  Patrick lowered his voice. “I’m running a drug bust on the Chinese mafia. They import raw opium in the sugar packets.”

  Her eyes widened. “Honestly?”

  “No. And would I tell you if it were true?” He smiled. “I’m just waiting for my take-out order. What about you?”

  “I’m waiting for someone.”

  He didn’t realize, until she’d said it, that he’d been enjoying her company. He got a kick out of flustering her, which, truthfully, wasn’t really all that hard. Judge Cormier reminded him of the Great and Powerful Oz: all bluster and bells and whistles, but when you pulled back the curtain, she was just an ordinary woman.

  Who happened to have a great ass.

  He felt heat rise to his face. “Happy family,” Patrick said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what I ordered. I was just trying to help you out with that casual conversation thing again.”

  “You only got one dish? No one goes to a Chinese restaurant and only gets one dish.”

  “Well, not all of us have growing kids at home.”

  She traced the lip of her wineglass with one finger. “You don’t have any?”

  “Never married.”

  “Why not?”

  Patrick shook his head, smiling faintly. “I’m not getting into that.”

  “Boy,” the judge said. “She must have done a job on you.”

  His jaw dropped open. Was he really that easy to read?

  “Guess you haven’t cornered the market on those amazing detective skills,” she said, laughing. “Except we call it women’s intuition.”

  “Yeah, that’ll get you your gold shield in no time.” He glanced at her ringless hand. “Why aren’t you married?”

  The judge repeated his own answer. “I’m not getting into that.”

  She sipped her wine in silence for a moment, and Patrick tapped his fingers on the wood of the bar. “She was already married,” he admitted.

  The judge set her glass down, empty. “So was he,” she confessed, and when Patrick turned to her, she looked him right in the eye.

  Hers were the pale gray that made you think of nightfall and silver bullets and the edge of winter. The color that filled the sky before it was torn in half by lightning.

  Patrick had never noticed this before, and suddenly he realized why. “You’re not wearing glasses.”

  “I sure am glad to know Sterling’s got someone as sharp as you protecting and serving them.”

  “You usually wear glasses.”

  “Only when I’m working. I need them to read.”

  And when I usually see you, you’re working.

  That was why he hadn’t noticed before that Alex Cormier was attractive: before this, when they crossed paths, she was in full buttoned-up judge mode. She had not been curled over the bar like a hothouse flower. She had not been quite so . . . human.

  “Alex!” The voice came from behind them. The man was spiffy, in a good suit and wingtips, with just enough gray hair at his temples to look distinguished. He had lawyer written all over him. He was no doubt rich and divorced; the kind of guy who would sit up at night and talk about penal code before making love; the kind of guy who slept on his side of the bed instead of with his arms wrapped so tight around her that even after falling asleep, they stayed tangled.

  Jesus Christ, Patrick thought, looking down at the ground. Where did that come from?

  What did he care who Alex Cormier dated, even if the guy was practically old enough to be her father?

  “Whit,” she said, “I’m so glad you could come.” She kissed him on the cheek and then, still holding his hand, turned to Patrick. “Whit, this is Detective Patrick Ducharme. Patrick, Whit Hobart.”

  The man had a good handshake, which only pissed Patrick off even more. Patrick waited to see what else the judge was going to say about him by way of introduction. But then, what options did she have? Patrick wasn’t an old friend. He wasn’t someone she’d met sitting at the bar. She couldn’t even say that they were both involved with the Houghton trial, because in that case, he shouldn’t have been talking to her.

  Which, Patrick realized, is what she’d been trying to tell him all along.

  May appeared from the kitchen, holding a paper bag folded and neatly stapled. “Here you go, Pat,” she said. “We see you next week, okay?”

  He could feel the judge staring. “Happy family,” she said, offering a consolation prize, the smallest of smiles.

  “Nice seeing you, Your Honor,” Patrick said politely. He threw the door of the restaurant open so hard that it banged on its hinges against the outside wall. He was halfway to his car when he realized he wasn’t even really hungry anymore.

  * * *

  The lead story on the local news at 11:00 p.m. was the hearing at the superior court to get Judge Cormier removed from the case. Jordan and Selena sat in bed in the dark, each with a bowl of cereal balanced on their stomachs, watching the tearful mother of a paraplegic girl cry into the television camera. “No one’s speaking for our children,” she said. “If this case gets messed up because of some legal snafu . . . well, they aren’t strong enough to go through it twice.”

  “Neither’s Peter,” Jordan pointed out.

  Selena put down her spoon. “Cormier’s gonna sit on that case if she has to crawl her way to the bench.”

  “Well, I can’t very well get someone to gilhooly her kneecaps, can I?”

  “Let’s look at the bright side,” Selena said. “Nothing in Josie’s statement can hurt Peter.”

  “My God, you’re right.” Jordan sat up so quickly that he sloshed milk onto the quilt. He set his bowl on the nightstand. “It’s brilliant.”

  “What is?”

  “Diana’s not calling Josie as a witness for the prosecution, because she’s got nothing they can use. But there’s nothing to stop me from calling
her as a witness for the defense.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re going to put the judge’s daughter on your witness list?”

  “Why not? She used to be Peter’s friend. He’s got precious few of them. It’s all in good faith.”

  “You wouldn’t really—”

  “Nah, I’m sure I’ll never use her. But the prosecutor doesn’t need to know that.” He grinned at Diana. “And incidentally . . . neither does the judge.”

  Selena set her bowl aside, too. “If you put Josie on your witness list . . . Cormier has to step down.”

  “Exactly.”

  Selena reached forward, bracketing his face with her palms to plant a kiss on his lips. “You’re awfully good.”

  “What was that?”

  “You heard me the first time.”

  “I know,” Jordan grinned, “but I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

  The quilt slipped down as he wrapped his arms around her. “Greedy li’l thing, aren’t you,” Selena murmured.

  “Isn’t that what made you fall in love with me?”

  Selena laughed. “Well, it wasn’t your charm and grace, honey.”

  Jordan leaned over her, kissing Selena until—he hoped—she had forgotten she was in the throes of making fun of him. “Let’s have another baby,” he whispered.

  “I’m still nursing the first one!”

  “Then let’s practice having another one.”

  There was no one in the world quite like his wife, Jordan thought—statuesque and stunning, smarter than he was (not that he’d ever admit it to her face), and so perfectly attuned to him that he nearly had to concede his skepticism and believe that psychics truly did walk among us. He buried his face in the spot he loved best on Selena: the part where the nape of her neck ran into her shoulder, where her skin was the color of maple syrup and tasted even sweeter.

  “Jordan?” she said. “Do you ever worry about our kids? I mean . . . you know. Doing what you do . . . and seeing what we see?”

  He rolled onto his back. “Well,” he said. “That certainly killed the moment.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Jordan sighed. “Of course I think about it. I worry about Thomas. And Sam. And whoever else might come along.” He came up on an elbow so that he could find her eyes in the dark. “But then I figure that’s the reason we had them.”

  “How so?”

  He looked over Selena’s shoulder, to the blinking green eye of the baby monitor. “Maybe,” Jordan said, “they’re the ones who’ll change the world.”

  * * *

  Whit hadn’t really made up Alex’s mind for her; that had already been done when she met him for dinner. But he’d been the salve she needed for her wounds, the justification she was afraid to give herself. You’ll get another big case, eventually, he had said. You won’t get back this moment with Josie.

  She walked into chambers briskly, mostly because she knew that this was the easy part. Divorcing herself from the case, writing the motion to recuse herself—that was not nearly as terrifying as what would happen tomorrow, when she was no longer the judge on the Houghton case.

  When, instead, she had to be a mother.

  Eleanor was nowhere to be found, but she’d left Alex the paperwork on her desk. She sat down and scanned it.

  Jordan McAfee, who yesterday hadn’t even opened his mouth at the hearing, was noticing up his intention to call Josie as a witness.

  She felt a fire spark in her belly. It was an emotion Alex didn’t even have words for—the animal instinct that came when you realized someone you love has been taken hostage.

  McAfee had committed the grievous sin of dragging Josie into this, and Alex’s mind spiraled wildly as she wondered what she could do to get him fired, or even disbarred. Come to think of it, she didn’t even really care if retribution came within the confines of the law or outside it. But suddenly, Alex stilled. It wasn’t Jordan McAfee she’d chase to the ends of the earth—it was Josie. She’d do anything to keep her daughter from being hurt again.

  Maybe she should thank Jordan McAfee for making her realize that she already had the raw material in her to be a good mother, after all.

  Alex sat down at her laptop and began to type. Her heart was hammering as she walked out to the clerk’s desk and handed the sheet of paper to Eleanor; but that was normal, wasn’t it, when you were about to leap off a cliff?

  “You need to call Judge Wagner,” Alex said.

  * * *

  It wasn’t Patrick who needed the search warrant. But when he heard another officer talking about swinging by the courthouse, he interceded. “I’m headed out that way,” he’d said. “I’ll do it for you.”

  In truth, he hadn’t been heading toward the courthouse, at least not until he’d volunteered. And he wasn’t such a Samaritan that he’d drive forty miles out of the goodness of his heart. Patrick wanted to go there for one reason only: it was another excuse to see Alex Cormier.

  He pulled into an empty spot and got out of his car, immediately spotting her Honda. This was a good thing; for all he knew, she might not even have been in court today. But then he did a double take as he realized that someone was in the car . . . and that that someone was the judge.

  She wasn’t moving, just staring out the windshield. The wipers were on, but it wasn’t raining. It looked like she didn’t even realize she was crying.

  He felt that same uneasy sway in the pit of his stomach that usually came when he’d reached a crime scene and saw a victim’s tears. I’m too late, he thought. Again.

  Patrick approached the car, but the judge must not have seen him coming. When he knocked on the window, she jumped a foot and hurriedly wiped her eyes. He mimed for her to roll down the window. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “Then stop looking,” she snapped.

  He hooked his fingers over the curl of the car door. “Listen. You want to go somewhere and talk? I’ll buy you coffee.”

  The judge sighed. “You can’t buy me coffee.”

  “Well, we can still get some.” He stood up and walked around to the passenger door, opened it, slid into the seat beside her.

  “You’re on duty,” she pointed out.

  “I’m taking my lunch break.”

  “At ten in the morning?”

  He reached across the console to the keys, dangling in the ignition, and started the car. “Head out of the parking lot and take a left, all right?”

  “Or what?”

  “For God’s sake, don’t you know better than to argue with someone who’s wearing a Glock?”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “You couldn’t possibly be carjacking me,” the judge said, but she started driving, as he’d asked.

  “Remind me to arrest myself later,” Patrick said.

  * * *

  Alex had been raised by her father to give everything her best shot, and apparently, that included falling off the deep end. Why not recuse herself from the biggest trial of her career, ask for administrative leave, and go out for coffee with the detective on the case all in one fell swoop?

  Then again, she told herself, if she hadn’t gone out with Patrick Ducharme, she would never have known that the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant opened for business at 10:00 a.m.

  If she hadn’t gone out with him, she would have had to drive home and start her life over.

  Everyone at the restaurant seemed to know the detective and didn’t mind him going into the kitchen to get Alex her cup of coffee. “What you saw back there,” Alex said hesitantly. “You won’t . . .”

  “Tell anyone you were having a little breakdown in your car?”

  She looked down at the mug he set in front of her, not even really knowing how to respond. In her experience, the moment you showed you were weak in front of someone, they’d use it against you. “It’s hard to be a judge sometimes. People expect you to act like one, even when you’ve got the flu and fe
el like crawling up into a ball and dying, or cursing out the cashier who shortchanged you on purpose. There’s not a lot of room for mistakes.”

  “Your secret’s safe,” Patrick said. “I won’t tell anyone in the law enforcement community that you’ve actually got emotions.”

  Alex took a sip of the coffee, then looked up at him. “Sugar?”

  Patrick folded his arms on the bar and leaned toward her. “Darling?” At her expression, he started to laugh, and then handed her the bowl. “Honestly, it’s no big deal. We all have lousy days at work.”

  “Do you sit in your car and cry?”

  “Not recently, but I have been known to overturn evidence lockers during fits of frustration.” He poured milk into a creamer and set it down. “You know, it’s not mutually exclusive.”

  “What’s not?”

  “Being a judge and being human.”

  Alex added the milk to her mug. “Tell that to everyone who wants me to recuse myself.”

  “Isn’t this the part where you tell me we can’t talk about the case?”

  “Yes,” Alex said. “Except I’m not on the case anymore. As of noon, it’ll be public knowledge.”

  He sobered. “Is that why you were upset?”

  “No. I’d already made the decision to leave the case. But then I got word that Josie’s on the witness list for the defense.”

  “Why?” Patrick said. “She doesn’t remember anything. What could she possibly say?”

  “I don’t know.” Alex glanced up. “But what if it’s my fault? What if the lawyer only did that to get me off the case because I was too stubborn to recuse myself when the issue was first raised?” To her great shame, she realized she was starting to cry again, and she stared down at the bar in the hope that Patrick would not notice. “What if she has to get up in front of everyone in court and relive that whole day?” Patrick passed her a cocktail napkin, and she wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually like this.”