Utah: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 7)

by J. J. Henderson

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  GO YOUR OWN WAY

  The juvenile courtrooms in the building downtown looked pretty much like courtrooms Lucy’d seen everywhere and anywhere else: bulky manifestations of the fading glory of the American system, still functioning reasonably well but lacking the majesterial sway of moral and legal certitude that she, Lucy, imagined that she had grown up with. That illusory but sterling amalgamation of Norman Rockwell, Perry Mason, and famous cases from American history she’d learned in school—the Scopes Trial, Brown v. Board and the others—had been swept away in the murky tide of more recent, less memorable legal ventures, beginning with the Chicago Seven of the late 1960s and spiralling down through a host of weird media-crazed inexplicable shit to end up in LA with the Menendez Brothers, OJ Simpson, and the cops let off the hook after brutally thumping on that chump Rodney King on national TV, endlessly repeated until the city burned. Followed by the many unjust and illegal maneuvers of the Bush Administration, which eliminated any sense, in Lucy at least, that the government had any moral authority whatsoever. Now when justice was served it came cold, without the trimmings, without the faith, with little honor and even less hope. And yet this was the place Lucy had convinced Ellen she needed to go.

  The double doors downstairs had been sealed off on one side to force everyone through a metal detector—some limp dick lunatic had murdered his cheating wife, her lover, and her sister in a second floor courtroom a few years back, and the metal detector appeared a couple of days later, a couple of days too late. The marble stairs were chipped, unpolished, with fluttering, hissing overhead fluorescent fixtures lending the spacious, once-grand lobbies a ghoulish glimmer. In the court itself, a small hearing room on the mezzanine level she and Jack had entered off a hallway lined with dozens of matched wooden doors, the paneled walls looked ready to peel away, and the seats and even the judge’s centrally located podium looked weathered, weary. The lighting was harsh and dreary, lending a pall to the faces of the authorities and citizens gathered to determine Ellen’s fate—or at least where the die would be cast that decided it.

  Lucy and Jack and the reporter Nora Delfino sat in the first of four rows of seats, behind the defendant’s table, where Ellen slouched next to the primly perched Loretta Graves. Ellen had been allowed to put her street clothes back on, and looked infinitely better than she had on the days Lucy’d come to visit, when Ellen showed up at the visiting area in baggy, oversized white coveralls, her hair uncombed and her face betraying the sleepless misery of life behind bars, inside the cold metal guts of the justice system. Here in the courtroom the system put on its public face, and that face required that Ellen wear her real clothes, so that she could be a “real” person again, at least for this hour or whatever time it would take to determine whether or not she’d be going back to Utah. Lucy thought she looked beat, in spite of the street clothes.

  On the other side a young assistant DA flown in from Utah shared the table with a local prosecutor; behind them sat the two marshals they’d met in the hall at Yates’ office. In the week since they’d had that encounter, Lucy had fallen in love, provisionally as are most such affairs initiated past the age of 30, with her lawyer Jack Yates. As she sat by him now, the nearness of his body sent little shivers of warmth into her, and she pictured him naked, in his bed in his waterfront house on Bainbridge Island, where they’d awakened just two hours earlier in order to rush over here after a scant few hours sleep following another well, not exactly marathon—maybe that would be too much to expect from a man past forty-five—but nonetheless deeply satisfying sexual encounter.

  Their first night together had been the day she and Ellen turned themselves in, although Lucy could hardly call it that. She was released on her own recognizance while Ellen, even though a juvenile, was denied any such privilege, since she had no family in the area, no money, and faced the more serious charges.

  That day had played out pretty much exactly as Jack envisioned it. Lucy, Ellen, Loretta, and Jack, accompanied by the agents, had driven over to the federal building, gone in, and the two fugitives had gotten booked. As planned, Lucy and Jack after booking went to a hearing room while Ellen and Loretta went in another direction, to the juvenile department. Per the agreement arranged by Jack, Lucy was released on her own recognizance after a brief grilling regarding her role in aiding and abetting. She was also warned that the Utah people might maneuver to have her extradited and charged with conspiracy should push come to shove in the Ellen Longford situation. And in the meanwhile to keep her butt out of Utah. At the other end of the building, in spite of Loretta’s efforts: pleading her own willingness to assume responsibility for Ellen’s whereabouts, bringing up Ellen’s pregnancy, and pointing out the difficulty Ellen would have in receiving a fair trial in Utah, Ellen was charged with homicide and sundry associated crimes, bound over for an extradition hearing, and stuck in the juvenile system. She’d been there a week. Today, it would be determined if and when she would be extradited to Utah.

  The authority here was a large African American woman named Eliza James. She had a no-nonsense demeanor and a graying Afro. She also appeared to be a very sympathetic soul. At least that’s what Lucy thought on first walking in.

  She and Jack had gone back to Bainbridge Island after she was released, and he’d taken her to dinner at the Four Crows, where they’d met a few days earlier. They walked their dogs together on the rocky beach by the restaurant, and then they went back to Jack’s house on the other side of the island, drank a shot of brandy apiece, and made love on a thick throw rug in front of a fireplace, acting like a couple of characters in a Playboy magazine fantasy shoot, except that halfway through Jack had to jump up and pull on his pants and run outside to call the two barking dogs in from the yard. It had been a delight, lying there naked in front of a fire, feeling half-ravaged, all sexually charged up, waiting for him to come back in and back inside her. At that moment Lucy had admitted to herself that as much as she hated the thought of Ellen’s being stuck in the juvenile jail, at least she knew exactly where she was; and at least the responsibility for her was now out of Lucy’s hands. Progress had been made, painful and unpredictable, but progress.

  Lucy had spent three of the last six nights at his house. He had good clean natural food, and he cooked pretty well. His five year old boy Alex, a joint custody kid and part time resident at the Bainbridge pad, seemed to like her and her dog. Alex liked having books read to him, and was allowed to watch only one hour of television a day. In fact everything was all right about Jack, so far, except his ex-wife. Wife, rather, since they were separated but not divorced. Lucy had yet to meet her but she lurked out there, a permanent smudge on the clean planes of Jack’s horizon.

  Judge James called the hearing to order and asked for statements from the DA on one side, and Loretta as Ellen’s counsel on the other. Since kidnapping was no longer an issue, the federal players had been moved off the case. It was now strictly a state matter. After the local prosecutor basically said our position is hand her over, we don’t want anything to do with this, the Utah DA argued predictably about the gravity of the charge, the juvenile’s obvious unreliability as evident in her running away, then segued into remarks about the sovereignty of state’s rights, and finally sat down. Loretta countered briefly with the same arguments she’d used before, and closed by announcing the presence of a piece of evidence which seriously affected the entire course and conduct of the Ellen Longford prosecution, wherever it might take place. The Utah DA squawked indignantly, and shortly thereafter the judge took he and Loretta into her chambers for a private discussion.

  “Your honor, I’ve heard nothing about any evidence of...”

  “Take it easy, young man,” said the Judge. “This is not a trial, it’s a...”

  “Your honor,” Loretta said, “I didn’t want to have to bring this up at this time, since it is a dismaying thing—a shocking thing—but I don’t see how, having seen this DVD,” she pulled it out of a brown m
anila envelope, “Anyone would send this child back to Utah. I will be surprised if the state of Utah wants to go to trial at all.”

  “Are you going to admit this as evidence, Ms. Graves?” Judge James said.

  “If necessary. But I think you should...”

  “Why don’t we look at the darned thing?” said the Utah DA, a scrawny little Mormon Yuppie in a cheap blue suit with a smirk permanently affixed to his face. “I don’t see what relevance a DVD could possibly have on this situation, but I’m perfectly willing to take a look.”

  “You won’t be speaking so blithely when you see this, sir,” Loretta said.

  “The DVD player’s on top of the television over there,” said Judge James, waving at the shelves across the room. “I like to watch The People’s Court sometimes, remind myself I should lighten up out there once in a while.”

  Loretta insterted the disk, pushed the appropriate buttons, then stood watching the DA and the judge as the thing started up. Loretta checked her watch when the image of the room first appeared, and checked it again when the DVD abruptly stopped. Eight minutes and seventeen seconds. Nobody said a word while Loretta went over, and got the thing out of the machine. She stuck it in its case and put the case back in the envelope, then turned around. The DA broke the silence. “That whole thing could be a fake,” he said. “She might have done...”

  “Get serious, Mr....what did you say your name was?” Loretta said.

  “Sammons. Albert Sammons.”

  “Where did you get this DVD?” asked Judge James. “Do other copies exist? Who made this?”

  “She made it, your honor. Ellen Longford. She did so with the express purpose of explaining—justifying—her actions. I don’t see how you can interpret this any other way.”

  “There is no way to validate the authenticity of that piece of—I hesitate to call such lurid and disgusting trash evidence at this point—without professional expertise,” said Sammons. “I find it impossible to believe that a man of Mr. Longford’s standing in the community and the church would—would—”

  “Have sex with his daughter?” Loretta cut in. “And this wasn’t the first time, according to Ellen, Mr. Sammons. No. This was the last in a series of night visits he made to her room, each time so that he could—”

  “There are ways—computers—digital things—this could be a complete—”

  “The girl is pregnant, Mr. Sammons. No computer could do that.”

  “No but there are a million boys out there that could, and I’m sure Miss Longford has met a few of them. Your honor, I submit that this item should be subject to professional analysis and have its authenticity verified before it can be even considered as a viable piece of evidence. Furthermore, there is no excuse for murder. Regardless of the viability of this ugly thing, I don’t care what the—”

  “Let’s go back into court, Counselors,” said the Judge. “I’ll make my remarks in there.”

  “Fine. You do what you have to do, your honor. But I want to say something right here and now to Mr. Sammons, just so he knows. Let me make it clear: if you extradite, and take Miss Longford to trial, I am going to make absolutely certain this thing is seen all over Utah. All over the country. All over the darned world if I have to. Local news, national news, Sixty darned Minutes, YouTube, Fox News, whatever it takes. I’m going to run this man’s reputation through a meatgrinder, do you understand? Because the way this looks to me, she did what she had to do and he got what he deserved. So you keep that in mind, Mr. Sammons.” Loretta felt herself talking like her sister; it felt pretty good.

  “Are you threatening the sovereign State of Utah, Miss Graves?” Sammons huffed indignantly, “because if you are, I can assure you that—”

  “That’s enough, counselors. Save your breath. Let’s go back in court.” Judge James hefted herself to her feet and led the way back into the courtroom. She banged her gavel and had the lawyers sit down.

  “Well,” she said. “I’ve now seen something I wish I hadn’t seen, but needed to see.” She looked at Ellen. “Young lady, it’s my job to make certain decisions about right and wrong, and justice—decisions which deeply affect the lives of people like you. Now I do have my doubts as to the state of Utah’s ability to do this trial in an open and just fashion. On the other hand the alleged event did take place in Utah. And further, the need for certain pieces of evidence to be technically examined by someone with the professional credentials to do so, in the state of the alleged crime, and the obvious interest shown by the sovereign state of Utah in pursuing this case—all of these factors have led me to decide that the state of Washington can only—I am afraid that in this case the overriding issues make it necessary that this case be decided where the alleged crime occurred. I should say crimes, since there is—was—possibly a crime of a different nature committed prior to the alleged homicide. And therefore I am ordering that you, Ellen Longford, be remanded into the custody of the Utah State Marshals and extradited from the State of Washington immediately.” She banged her gavel.

  “What a crock of bullshit,” Lucy said, too loudly. Jack Yates shushed her as Loretta leaped to her feet.

  “I want to put on the record my disagreement with the—”

  “This hearing is over,” said Judge James. “Counselor, take your seat.” She looked imperiously at Lucy. “As for you, Miss—ah, Ripken, I believe it is—if you ever even whisper an obscenity in my courtroom again I’ll have you up on contempt charges so fast your head’ll be spinning as you prance off to jail.” She banged her gavel again. “You gentlemen from Utah are required to take the prisoner into custody at this time, and to transport her back to Utah by the timeliest means. I recommend you get on a plane this afternoon. In other words you get out of my state and don’t hurry back.”

  Loretta sat. Lucy glowered at the judge and leaned forward. “Ellen, hey.” Ellen shook her head, holding herself, her body bobbing. Lucy could hear her softly sobbing, though Ellen refused to turn and look at her. “Listen, I’ll be out, I’ll come out soon,” she said, knowing it was likely a lie since the condition of her own release included a proviso that she not enter the State of Utah again. If she did, charges against her would be immediately reinstated—regardless of the outcome of the Ellen Longford situation. That was the deal she’d agreed to, it being the only way Jack and the Feds were able to get all her assorted conspiracy and accessory charges dropped on a provisional basis. “Loretta’s a smart lawyer.”

  “How could they do this? Did you show them the DVD?” Ellen said to Loretta, her voice small, high, shaky. “Didn’t they see what happened?”

  “That man’s job is to get you, Ellen,” said Loretta. “So he claimed it was fake.”

  “Fake? How could anyone fake what was on there?” she looked over as the Utah DA and marshals shook hands, congratulating themselves. They looked pleased, even more so when they came over and put handcuffs on her and led her away. They were not particularly gentle, though Ellen was obviously in a state of fear bordering on shock.

  “Keep the faith, Ellen,” Lucy said loudly as Ellen, handcuffed, reached the courtoom side door. “We’ll be there.” Ellen didn’t look back. She disappeared through the door, a marshal in front, a marshal behind. “Jesus Christ,” said Lucy. “I can’t believe they...did you show them the DVD?”

  “Of course I did, Lucy,” said Loretta. “And it was just as ugly as the first time I saw it. But the judge just didn’t want to deal with it. It was easier to send her back.”

  “Honestly, this may be better. Or at least more appropriate. I think this case needs to be settled in Utah,” said Jack. “I know it’s going to be hard on her, but you’re going to kick butt, Loretta.”

  “She’s starting to show, isn’t she?” Lucy said. “What are you proposing to do about that, L?”

  “Miss Ripken,” said Larsen, who’d been sitting with Devereaux in the back of the room. “You’ll not be showing your face in Utah, I trust?”

  “Not unless I have to bre
ak her out of jail,” said Lucy. “I was just trying to give her some moral support, you know? I’m not really planning to go out there.”

  “Good. And if you do get some kind of foolish idea that you should—look, I’m already out on a limb for you so if you change your mind, keep your head down, OK?

  “Don’t worry,” Lucy said. “If I never see Utah again I’ll be fine.” Then she thought, but I want to see Ellen again. I have to see Ellen again. She looked at Jack, and whispered, “I have to go out there, Jacques. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Let’s talk later. Maybe you won’t—hey, Loretta—you know there are two more copies of the DVD. I have one, and Nora has one. Do you want to go public?”

  “Not yet, Mr. Yates. Not just yet.” She took Lucy’s arm. “Lucy, let’s grab a bite. I need to talk to you.”

  “Yeah, OK. Jack, see you later?” Lucy said.

  “I got a hearing to do, but it shouldn’t take too long. Five-twenty ferry?”

  “Upper deck. See you then.”

  “Bye now. Nice try Loretta. Don’t feel bad. Judge James just knew this needed to be done back there. Don’t blame her.”

  Loretta said, “Thanks, Mr. Yates.” She and Lucy headed out of the building and down to Pike Place. They found a window table in the little cafeteria on the main market level. Elliott Bay spread out below them, water sparkling in the summer sun.

  “Well,” Lucy said after a reflective moment. “Quite a week, eh? How’s your husband holding up?”