Paradise Interrupted

by Penny Mickelbury

  Carole Ann stood up and, characteristically, began to pace, even though she was not entertaining a single thought. Her brain had, like some piece of machinery, momentarily shut down. Phone still squished against her ear, she paced back and forth the length of her bedroom, a room easily large enough to accommodate pacing, until she heard Jake speak again.

  “I’m sorry Jake, I was...woolgathering, as my mother would say. What do we know?”

  “About Campos, not much more than that, but Denis St. Almain made bail late Friday, just before the court closed for the day.”

  “Goddammit!” Her exclamation was completely involuntary, for the gravity of the situation took several seconds more to formulate itself into rational thought. Then she was rendered speechless, for she knew that already every law enforcement agency in D.C., Maryland and Virginia—and there were more than two dozen of them—would be looking for Denis St. Almain, and she understood that every drug dealer in particular, and every criminal in general, would be in jeopardy until Denis St. Almain was apprehended.

  “And what about, the constables, Chalfont and LeGrande? Jake, are you certain about it being assault weapons?”

  She could almost see his eyes narrow and grow cold. Neither of them wanted to embrace what that portended. “As certain as I can be. Collette was practically hysterical, which, as you can imagine, must have been a sight to behold, but based on witness accounts and the condition of the bodies, I’d say there’s not much doubt about it.”

  “This is insanity,” she whispered, more to herself than to Jake.

  “Yeah, it is,” he responded, “and you get to be the shrink.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Means that Collette is demanding that we come down there and do something. Immediately. And I can’t leave.”

  “Dammit, Jake! Don’t do this to me!”

  “I’m not the one doing it to you, C.A. I’ll meet you at the office in an hour. And if you swing by the Jefferson and get the fish and berries, I’ll stop in at the Chesapeake Bagel place and get the bread and cheese.” And he hung up before she could complain, acquiesce, or cuss.

  She punched the phone off but continued to stand before the balcony doors, looking out at Washington’s Foggy Bottom neighborhood come slowly but certainly to Sunday morning life: Already there were several cabin cruisers and speed boats on the placid Potomac, and at least a dozen joggers and bikers on the path, and small clusters of early-rising tourists strolling the monument grounds. The tour busses would begin to roll in another hour and the museums and monuments would open soon after, and the lines would begin to form. It would be another several hours, however, before the natives began stirring and making appearances into the outside world; and because Washington was essentially a company town, and because government and politics were the company and the media its handmaiden, the news of Steve Campos’ murder would be the topic of choice of the natives. And just maybe, somewhere deep within the State Department, a couple of Caribbean desk officers would discuss the murders of the two cops. The tourists, if they learned of the events and gave any thought to them at all, no doubt would not find either worthy of interrupting their vacations.

  Carole Ann called to cancel her day’s appointments with a little bit of guilt and major trepidation: She could tell from Mike Wong’s voice that he’d heard about the Isle de Paix assassinations, though he carefully refrained from mentioning them, and she allowed him to commit her to lunch tomorrow. As if she had a choice in the matter. And she allowed Cleo, her former assistant at the law firm, to guilt-trip her about canceling brunch twice in one month. All she could do was apologize; she couldn’t even re-schedule, given that any day now might find her en route to Isle de Paix.

  She stood in the shower for a long time, her thoughts and feelings as wild and tangled as the untamed Isle de Paix jungle. She’d come to think of the little island as a paradise, and though she wasn’t naive enough to believe that even paradise was perfect these days, she hadn’t once entertained the notion that the stateside brand of ugliness had invaded the place and she didn’t want to entertain it now. She also didn’t want to be forced into a hurry-up trip to the Caribbean to fix a problem she didn’t fully understand, no matter how hysterical Philippe Collette was. She allowed herself momentary amusement at the thought of the staid, formal island president hysterical. Then she wondered how possible— how likely— it was that the murder of the cops hadn’t been completely unexpected. Philippe Collette wouldn’t be the first client to withhold negative or damaging information in order to paint a rosy picture rather than a true one; and the true one was grim enough.

  “Shit.” She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. She needed coffee. And food. She remembered that Jake expected her to stop at the Jefferson Hotel for capers and lox— berries and fish to him. “Shit,” she muttered again. It was barely seven-thirty in the morning, and the day already was in the crapper. But she knew better than wonder what else could go wrong.

  The Central Monitoring Unit at Gibson, Graham International was staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, so activity in the steel-encased basement room on a Sunday morning was not unusual. The statically charged atmosphere, however, was unusual in the extreme. Better than half of GGI’s employees were retirees or refugees from one of the too-numerous-to-name local law enforcement agencies in and around Washington, and the murder of a sitting judge unnerved them, put them on edge, caused their hands to clinch into fists and their jaws to lock. Cops got killed in the line of duty, not judges. Not while standing with his wife in the driveway of his away-from-work retreat looking at the moon hanging over the Chesapeake Bay. And how doubly upsetting for the two unarmed island cops to be slaughtered.

  For not the first time since partnering with Jake to establish GGI did Carole Ann feel the isolation of being not only the only non-cop in the group, but, as a criminal defense attorney, usually being the only one feeling concern for the accused. In this case, for Denis St. Almain who, she wanted to remind them all, was not the one who had yelled the threat to Steve Campos. But she knew that didn’t matter; not to the ex-cops who worked for her, and not to the scores of on-the-job cops scouring the countryside and the tenements of the cities looking for him.

  Though the atmosphere in the control center was charged and the technicians and operatives were tense and edgy, there was no inattention to duty. A GGI operative was seated before every monitor and every keyboard, completely attentive to the needs and business of their clients. Half a dozen others were on telephone headsets receiving or conveying the various bits and pieces of information that defined their collective existence.

  “You ready to eat? I’m hungry.”

  She turned to find Jake sauntering toward the door and she followed, realizing that she was at least an hour past time for her first cup of coffee. He stopped and held the door for her, and they strolled down the carpeted hallway in silence, to the elevator.

  “Cops really piss you off sometimes, don’t we?” Jake asked as he punched the elevator button.

  She cut him a side-ways look. “Developing new character traits in your old age?” And when he cast her an equally side-ways questioning look she continued, “Perception, insight, concern for the feelings of others.”

  He pointedly ignored her and focused instead on one of the Subterraneans who had emerged from her cloister and was walking in their direction, headed, no doubt, for the employee lounge. She raised a hand in a laconic greeting just as the elevator door slid open. They responded in kind and stepped inside for the short but slow ride up to the main floor and their respective offices. They were comfortable in the silence between them. Both spent considerable time thinking and working through problems and conflicts and therefore not only didn’t require constant verbal input, but generally preferred not having their thoughts interrupted. They were content in their silence until both had plates of food and cups of coffee and were seated on the sofa in Carole Ann’s office.

  “Co
ps don’t piss me off, Jake,” C.A. began in a slow, almost musing tone of voice, “as much as they—you—mystify me. I don’t understand how you think, any more than you understand how lawyers think, and that, in and of itself, really is quite all right. In fact, it’s better than all right; it’s as is should be.”

  He glanced side-ways at her again. “Then what?” he asked.

  “I guess I don’t like feeling so out-numbered,” she answered with wry matter-of-factness. “Only one of me, so many of you.”

  “You’re not thinking that we oughta hire any more lawyers!” he exclaimed, eyes widened in only half-mock horror, and she took the opportunity to ignore him as she stood and crossed to the credenza at the center of the room and re-filled her coffee cup. Her back was to the office door and she turned quickly around when she heard Jake ask somebody what he or she wanted.

  “Sorry to bother you Mr. Graham, Miss Gibson, but there’s somebody here to see you.” A young operative named Cynthia or Sylvia or Celeste—Carole Ann didn’t remember— stood hesitantly in the doorway.

  “There ain’t nobody here to see me on a Sunday,” Jake growled in typical Jake fashion.

  No, Sir, Mr. Graham. She’s here to see Miss Gibson.”

  “And there ain’t nobody here to see her on a Sunday, either,” he snapped.

  “Who is she and what does she want?” C.A. asked with mild interest while signaling Jake to behave. “And how on earth would she know to look for me here? I never work on Sunday.”

  Cynthia or Sylvia or Celeste smiled. “She said you used to work all the time, Sundays included, and she was just guessing that you still did.” Then the smile vanished to be replaced by a slight frown. “But then she said you didn’t really know her...”

  “What’s her name?” C.A. asked.

  “Hazel Copeland. She said you might not remember her but she was a juror on a case you tried a couple of years ago.”

  The voice faded as Carole Ann’s memory pulled up the file on Hazel Copeland. It was true that the two women had never met, not in a traditional sense; had met only in the formal and rather artificial way in which lawyers introduce themselves to jurors at the beginning of a trial: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. My name is Carole Ann Gibson and I am the attorney for the defendant. When she introduced herself to the jury to which Hazel Copeland belonged, Tommy Griffin was her client and Hazel was the one juror she’d had to convince to save an innocent man from ruin. Hazel Copeland. Juror Number Seven.

  “Bring her in,” Carole Ann said quietly, and waited until she was certain the hallway was empty before she addressed Jake, knowing she’d have to work quickly to assuage his pique.

  “I told you about her, Jake. She’s the juror from Tommy’s trial, the one who...” She stopped herself. She was about to say, The one who changed my life, for that, in truth, was the effect that Hazel Copeland had had on her. But she didn’t speak the words.

  Jake’s face compressed itself into the face of the homicide detective he’d been for almost twenty-five years before a bullet in the back ended his career...the bullet he’d taken investigating the murder of Carole Ann’s husband. “You haven’t seen this woman since Tommy’s trial.” It was not a question and he knew the answer but he’d had to voice the words to give his mind something to think, for neither of them could imagine a reason for a visit from Hazel Copeland, though both would be forever grateful to her. She’d saved their lives. All of them. Carole Ann and Tommy and Jake.

  Standing in the doorway, she looked almost exactly as she had for the almost six weeks of Tommy Griffin’s trial: Indomitable. She was a tall, erect, handsome, chocolate brown woman with, it seemed to Carole Ann, more silver in her hair than she remembered from the trial, but possessing exactly the same unfaltering, clear gaze. C.A. stood and crossed to the door.

  “Mrs. Copeland. It’s good to see you again.”

  “Thank you for seeing me, Miss Gibson. I’m really sorry for interrupting you on a Sunday.”

  Carole Ann waved away the apology and moved toward the couch where Jake was standing, his face a mask of calm implacability. “This is my partner, Jake Graham. This is Hazel Copeland.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Miz Copeland,” Jake drawled extending his hand. Hazel Copeland towered over him and it was only the magnitude of his personality that mitigated the difference in their sizes. Jake stepped away from the couch, around the table and gestured to the woman who now had become his guest to have a seat. “Would you like some coffee, Miz Copeland?”

  He brought her the cup on a cloth napkin, and a spoon and sugar and cream. He easily slipped into the role of host, but Carole Ann always knew that he always was a cop, with a cop’s instincts; and something about Hazel Copeland’s unexpected and highly unlikely visit on a Sunday morning raised to attention the hairs on the backs of his arms. He also knew— and Carole Ann knew that he knew— how thrown off-center she was by this unprecedented visit, and how much she needed his help until she could restore her equilibrium.

  “Are you still at the hotel, Mrs. Copeland?” Carole Ann asked as she seated herself in the rocking chair across the coffee table. Hazel Copeland had worked her way up from maid to head of housekeeping at one of the most exclusive hotels in the nation’s Capital, putting four children through college along the way. She was a proud, regal woman and not the kind of person to pay unexpected visits to near strangers on Sunday morning when she normally would have been in church.

  “I’ll retire in two years. When my youngest finishes college.” She spoke calmly and matter-of-factly, but tension strained her voice. Jake, who had been standing adjacent to the couch— hovering, almost— abruptly sat down next to her, and Carole Ann stilled the motion of her chair mid-rock, and angled slightly forward.

  “Why are you here, Mrs. Copeland? Is something wrong? One of you children...?”

  “Oh, Lord no!” the woman exclaimed, and closed her eyes momentarily, as if the thought was too much to contemplate. “I...it’s nothing like that. No, it’s...I’ve been keeping up with you, Miss Gibson, every since that trial. Reading about you and what’s happened to you. You, too, Mr. Graham. And I believe Officer Griffin works for you?” She nodded to herself, neither expecting nor needing an answer. “I’m glad he was innocent. Too many of the young ones are too guilty of too much...” She faltered and her voice hitched. She reached for her cup and took several sips.

  Carole Ann and Jake exchanged a quick glance before returning their gaze to their guest. They sat quietly, both having extensive practice waiting for someone—client or perp—to get ready to talk. They watched Hazel Copeland ready herself.

  “One of the women who works for me at the hotel, one of the maids, is named Simone St. Almain. She’s been at the hotel for almost twenty years. She’s the linen supervisor now.” She had raised her eyes to look at Carole Ann. “I see you know who she is,” Hazel said quietly.

  “I know who Denis St. Almain is,” Carole Ann replied.

  “So does every cop in every burg and borough on the Eastern seaboard,” Jake snapped, fully back to himself. “What is this Simone to him and why do we care, Miz Copeland?”

  “She’s his mother and the police have destroyed her home and have created so much unrest at the hotel that the general manager has insisted that I put her on a leave of absence! And that’s just not right, Miss Gibson! It’s not right, Mr. Graham! Simone is a decent, hard-working woman. Denis is a grown man who hasn’t lived with his mother in more than fifteen years.”

  “But she was in court with him on Friday, wasn’t she?” Carole Ann probed.

  Hazel didn’t try to conceal her surprise. “Of course,” she answered. “She’s his mother. He’s her son. And he’s accused of these horrible things.”

  “Like drug dealing,” Jake offered.

  “He’s never done any of those things.”

  Jake slid down the couch away from Hazel, and angled himself so that he could face her directly. “How do you know?”

 
“I’ve known Denis since he was a youngster. He’s no more a drug dealer than either of my boys is. And I know because I know good when I see it and I know evil when I see it.” She turned away from Jake and locked eyes with Carole Ann. “You taught me that lesson, Miss Gibson. I was ready to send Officer Griffin to jail and throw away the key. A dirty cop! The worst kind of criminal there is! But you reminded me how necessary it is to always look below the surface. I’ve been looking at Simone and her son for twenty years. He did not kill that judge. I know that just as I know my own sons didn’t kill him.”

  Carole Ann Gibson and Jacob Graham had spent their entire professional careers standing on different sides of the legal bar but one thing they shared was the knowledge of the truth when they heard it and a good witness when they saw one. Whether or not Denis St. Almain was a judge-murdering, drug dealing low life may have been open to discussion. That Hazel Copeland believed him to be innocent was not.

  Carole Ann sighed and stood up and began to pace, down along the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows into which the morning sun poured, bringing with it all the glory of a summer morning. “What do you want from us, Mrs. Copeland?”

  The woman shrugged and raised her palms in an almost helpless, partially placating gesture. “I’m not sure. Simone has begged for my help and I don’t know how to help her. The hotel general manager said he wants to help Simone, but he doesn’t know how, either. He just knows that the police have to stop hounding Simone and disturbing the guests. I thought about you. I don’t know why. I told Mr. Crawford about you—he’s the general manager—and the hotel will pay you.”

  “To do what, Miz Copeland?” Jake pressed.

  “Find him. Find Denis.”

  Jake jumped to his feet. “Not possible. That would put us in directly in the way of a major police action.” He joined Carole Ann in front of the window and paced several steps himself, hands stuffed deeply into the pockets of his khaki slacks. “I’m sorry for your friend, Miz Copeland, but there’s no way we can step into the middle of this,” and he looked at his partner, waiting for her to corroborate his statement.