The Sign of the Book (17 page)

I could give him up, which I hated.

I could confront the old man here in the dark woods.

Intimidate the bastard. I was good at that, I knew how it was done. It had failed to work once, with a brutal thug who finally had to be convinced the hard way.

I heard footsteps. He was coming now, tearing through the underbrush. “Jerry,” I said into my coat. “You've got to go back.”

His fists tightened on my shirt and his head burrowed under my chin. Something about this kid, something other than the obvious, touched me deep, but here and now I couldn't find a handle for it.

“I'm sorry, kid.”

I couldn't elaborate: I was out of time. The old man loomed up not twenty yards away, a shadow talking furiously to himself. “I'll kill that little bastard,” he said.

I felt my own fury rise up to meet him.

“I'll kill him,” he said, and in the same heartbeat I got up close, right in his face. “How'd you like to try that with somebody your own size?”

He cried out, spun away, dropped his light.

I kicked it out of his reach and he fell trying to get it.

For God's sake don't touch him,
I thought.

I didn't need to, he scared easy enough. I could taste this old man's fear and I liked the taste of it. Killer-soft, with snakelike malice, I said, “How'd you like to try that with me, Ralph?”

I had truly scared the hell out of him. He wheezed, hyperventilating, and finally managed to croak, “Who the f-f…”

I covered Jerry's ears and said, “I am your worst fuckin' nightmare, old man.”

I heard him struggling to his feet.

“Who're… y-y… who'r…”

“You touch this kid again and you'll find out who I am.”

“How'd… d'you know… m-m-n… ame?”

“I know everything about you, Ralph. I know how you like to beat up little kids.”

“That's a-g-g-od-amn-l… lie.”

I let the moment pass in ominous silence.

“I didn-n't mean that. Some-omebody's t-t-ellin' you lies, tha's all… I… meant.”

“You must think I'm playing around with you, grandpa. Is that what you think?”

“No… G-g-od, n-o…”

“Because if it is, you are making a monster mistake.”

He tried to speak but his voice quaked and he couldn't get it out.

“Have you been listening to me at all, old man?”

He tried a single watery word but sucked air in through his nose and lost it.

“Was that a yes, Ralph?”

“Y… y…”

“That's good. Maybe you just don't realize how soft the human body is. Maybe that's your problem. You don't know how easy a body can be broken or torn up. How easy an arm can be pulled out of its socket, or a skull fractured…”

“Oh Christ… oh Christ… please J-es-s… on't do that…”

“I'm not talking about me, Ralph, I'm talking about you. You push a kid around, you can mess him up bad.”

“I nev… n-n-n, uh, n-never hurt him… he just gets wild… n… eeds d-d-dis-pline.”

“Maybe you're the one who needs the discipline.”

I felt him cringe back into the dark, a typical coward. “Please… don't do that… p-p-lease don't…”

A moment passed. In the distance I could hear the old woman calling Ralph's name. Ralph tried to say
please
again but couldn't quite get it out.

“That's much better.
Please
is a good, kind word. You should use it more often.”

I picked up his light and tried to give it to him, but it fell short and I left it there. I wanted to brush off his coat for effect but didn't.

Don't touch the old fucker,
I thought.
Not even a finger. Don't touch him at all.

“Your grandson is cold, Ralph. Take him inside and warm him up. Give him some hot chocolate. And do yourself a helluva big favor. Remember what I said.”

The night has a thousand eyes and I told him that.

“You so much as touch him again and I'll know.”

I uncovered Jerry's ears and let the quiet night surround us all.

“I'll know, Ralph,” I said.

I am in deep shit, I thought. But if anything had felt right in a long time, that had.

I turned away and left Jerry in the woods with his so-called grandfather.

A judge is the ruler of his kingdom. He sits on his throne and makes decisions that affect people profoundly and change their lives. If he's a good judge, his decisions are not only good law, they are made with conscience and rooted in humility. If he's not a good judge, he comes to his throne steeped in arrogance and concerned mainly with his own ego. If he's a bad judge, he combines the arrogance and the ego with bellicose intolerance, and, in the worst cases, ignorance.

Sometimes he may go too far and get overturned. Occasionally he is reprimanded or removed from the bench, but all too often he's left alone and his bad decisions stand for years, maybe decades, till the principals die or just don't care anymore. The law has many soft spots where there is no black-and-white and the judge's discretion is broad. A capital offense in one kingdom has far fewer dire consequences a few miles away, in the land across the river where laws are different. This is not a job for ego, yet the job nurtures and in fact demands it. The job cries out for wisdom and compassion and anger, and half a dozen other qualities that are incompatible or almost impossible to find beating in a single heart. In the country of the law the one-eyed judge is king. Contempt of court is a potent weapon and it too is a sword with a wide blade. The judge can be lenient, understanding, or an absolute tyrant. Mess with the judge and you can go to jail.

I had met all kinds of judges in my police career: I remembered bleeding-heart liberals who wore their politics into the courtroom and mean-spirited old bastards who suffered no slight, real or imagined, to their dignity. I had known a judge who had ruthlessly punished defendants because of a dislike for their attorneys, and another who was a notorious woman-hater, finding any flimsy excuse to let vicious rapists back on the street. A lot of judges hold a cop's balls to the fire: such are the times we live in. One judge I knew had the memory of an elephant, had been quick to form a bias and quicker yet to take offense. He had wielded his power heavily and had been known to remind attorneys years later of small incidents he had found offensive. Most judges I had met were at least okay; a few had been superb, and one on the lowest end of the spectrum was a moron who had barely eked out a passing grade on his fourth try at the bar exam. Amazingly, he survived on his suburban-Denver-county court bench for almost twenty years and finally died there.

The Honorable Harold Adamson seemed to possess at least some of the bad traits. I knew he was eccentric: I couldn't think of any other judge in all my days on the fringes of Denver law who'd have gone up to the scene of a case he'd be hearing. The judge wouldn't want to get that close; judges just didn't do that. Still, Parley considered his knowledge of law sound, his understanding of due process at least okay. It was his ego that got in the way, overruling knowledge and dismissing due process when it suited him. Since his appointment to the bench a year ago, he had become like a new cock in a barnyard, and that night I had a hunch I was about to fall directly into his crosshairs.

In the best of all worlds old Marshall would have accepted the heartfelt advice I had left with him and would suddenly have become endowed with infinite kindness and the spirit of grandfatherly love. He had seemed thoroughly frightened, but I knew that, like the judge, I had stepped over a line and my own comeuppance was a phone call away. I opened my eyes in the morning as a car door slammed, and when I went to the window, Lennie was standing in the front yard smoking. He finished his weed, tossed the butt in the snow, and headed up the walk to the front door. I met him there.

“Mr. Janeway?” His official voice: the ticket-writer, as if we had never met.

I stared at him and he said, “Wonder if I might have a word with you.”

I stared some more. This wasn't my house, it wasn't my place to invite him in.

“We had a complaint last night from a Mr. Ralph Marshall. Are you familiar with that gentleman?”

“I know who he is.”

“I thought maybe you would. Apparently some skulker came out to his house in the middle of the night, threatened and terrorized himself, his wife, and the children who have been put under his care. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, sir?”

“Did he say I did?”

“What Mr. Marshall said or did not say is between himself and our office. Right now, would it be too much trouble for you to answer my question?
Now,
sir. It's really a simple question. Did you threaten Mr. Marshall last night?”

“Mr. Marshall wrenched his grandson's arm damn near out of its socket. I told him not to do that anymore.”

“You didn't knock him to the ground?”

“I never touched him.”

“That's not what he says. And he's got scrapes and bruises all over his face. Any idea how those would've gotten there?”

“Mr. Marshall was drunk. He fell in the dark woods.”

“So you say. Doesn't sound like you're denying it was you out in the woods.”

Behind me I heard Parley come into the hall. “What's goin' on here?”

“It's nothing,” I said. “The deputy wants to ask me a few questions.”

“About what?”

Lennie handed me a piece of paper. I recognized the look of it.

“This is a summons ordering you to appear later this morning at a hearing in Judge Adamson's court.”

“Hold on, what's this about?” Parley said. “We haven't had notice of any hearing.”

“It's a summons to appear at a hearing on a temporary restraining order against your client.”

Parley laughed. “You call this notice? What the hell's going on here?”

“Look, I came out here to serve him and now he's been served.”

Lennie turned and walked away.

Parley stared at me. “Jesus H. Christ.”

“All I did was talk to him, Parley.”

“Well, goddammit, that's enough. Tell me exactly what happened.”

We sat at the kitchen table and I told him.

“God almighty,” he said. “Haven't you got any sense at all?”

“Apparently not. I didn't have a lot of time to think about it.”

“Christ in a hot-air balloon.”

“Look,” I said, “I want you to stay away from this. For the sake of your client, consider me resigned from your case, as of six o'clock last night.”

“So now what, you're gonna be your own lawyer? You really are losing your marbles, kid.”

“Yeah, I know. What can I say, I screwed up. I want to stay away from your case as much as possible from here on out. Don't bail me out, don't put in any appearances. If you want to do something, call Social Services and get that kid out of there.”

“You're outta your goddamn mind. Erin's gonna love this.”

A few hours later I met the judge in his arena.

 

The courtroom was empty, except for the judge, the deputy, and a reporter. The hearing was announced and the judge peered down from on high.

“Well, you're just like Charlie Chaplin, aren't you? You seem to pop up when I least expect you, and when I do expect you, you're not there. Would you explain to me, please, what the hell you were doing out at the Marshalls' last night?”

“I went to see the kid. I had visited with him that afternoon and I was concerned for his safety.”

“What about his safety?”

“He's being abused by his grandfather.”

“What does that mean? You don't mean to insinuate he's…” He made an obscene gesture with his hands.

“Not that kind of abuse.”

“What, then?”

“He beats the kid.”

“Is that all? Listen, a little birching never hurt a kid yet, and from what I've heard, that one's a handful.”

“He can't
speak,
Your Honor, and I'm not talking about a little birching. I'm talking about a
beating,
Judge, a beating bad enough to leave his whole shoulder black.”

“In case you hadn't heard, Mr. Janeway, there's a system in this state. Social Services is in charge of the kids. There's a guardian ad litem who's been appointed—”

“I know all that, Your Honor…”

“Then why didn't you report all this to the guardian?”

“There wasn't time.”

“So you thought you could ride in there and rescue this kid yourself. Is that about what happened?”

The hell with it: I launched into the tale. I told him about my interview with the grandmother and my growing sense that something was wrong. Call it an old cop's instinct: call it a feeling, a hunch. I told him about the bruise on Jerry's shoulder and how I had found it. I told him about the grandfather and how he had chased the kid through the woods, threatening him with more violence. “That's a toxic old man the kid's been put with, Judge; he's already been slapped around at least once and would have been again if I hadn't been there. The old man drinks like a fish and talks like a drunken sailor. Maybe he loves the hell out of his real, blood grandchildren and hates this one, I don't know. Last night Jerry ran away and hid freezing in a ditch, wearing nothing but a pair of pajamas, while the old man thrashed drunkenly through the bushes, cursing and threatening to kill him. I'm afraid for his safety, and if somebody doesn't take him out of there, whatever happens to him is on all your heads, all of you, I don't care who's got jurisdiction or who wants to pass the buck to some other department. I'm going to make it a personal cause to see that everybody in the state of Colorado knows about it.”

Stunned silence. For long seconds the judge stared as if he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. Then he leaned over his bench and said, “You
dare
come in here and talk to me like that. My courtroom is not a soapbox. You must want to go to jail, fella.”

“Lock me up, I don't give a damn, but somebody's got to do something for that boy. This is a kid who may have witnessed the bloody murder of the only father he knew, and now the
system
's got him sentenced to a dark house that's no better than some prison camp, with an alcoholic who seems to resent the hell out of him, and I can't get you to care. If that kid doesn't get help soon, he may go off his rocker for good, so put me in jail if that's your only answer.”

“Is this your doing, Mr. McNamara? Is this how you're going to try this case?”

I turned and saw Parley sitting behind me. “Well, Judge—”

“Don't blame McNamara for what I say. This has nothing to do with his case.”

The judge rapped his gavel. “You're in contempt of court. Five-hundred-dollar fine.”

“I won't pay it.”

The judge laughed. “You are a piece of work, aren't you? You waltz in here and expect who?—me, I guess—to take those children away from their grandparents, who have relocated from Denver, gone to a helluva lot of trouble, and you expect me to do this on your say-so.”

“In the first place, they are not the grandparents of the older boy. They came out here to take care of their dead son's blood children. There's no reason to assume that they care at all about—”

“You're wasting my time. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I must be stupid, I guess. With all due respect, sir, one of us seems to be.”

“Why, you arrogant young snot. How'd you like to double that fine?”

“Judge, at this point I don't care.”

“Then go ahead, sit in jail and think about it. On Friday I'm leaving to hear a case next week in another county. If you haven't had a drastic change of attitude by then, you can sit there for three weeks till I get back again.”

He shuffled through some notes on his bench. He looked up and said, “Jail this bastard.”

“Yes,
sir.
” Lennie approached the bench and said, “Put out your hands, cowboy.”

Behind me, Parley said, “Your
Honor,
I don't think the handcuffs are necessary.”

“I don't tell the deputy how to handle his prisoners. You break the law, you might just get humiliated.”

Out in the yard, Lennie gave me a shove. I crossed the lot in shackles and people watched from the sidewalk.

“Step lively, dickhead,” Lennie said. “Your ass belongs to me now.”

“You belong in a circus, Lennie,” I said.