Dance for the Dead (3 page)

“Did she say anything
else?”

“She asked Dennis if there
was any way of doing this besides actually showing up in court. Could
we call and ask for a delay or something. He said that he didn’t
know who was honest and who wasn’t. A phone call wouldn’t
stop the case for sure, but it would tell the bad guys I was coming
for sure. Then he said if they fooled the judge they could do
something that day, right away. I don’t know what. Jane drove
for a long time without saying anything. Then she said, ‘is
there any way to know what’s in the building?’”

“What did she mean by
that?”

“She said, ‘We want
to fade in. If Timmy’s the only boy in the crowd, we’re
in trouble.’ She said something about adoption and custody.”

“I see,” said
Ambrose. “Did Mr. Morgan know the answer?”

“We stopped at a phone
booth and he looked in the book and made a call. He came back and got
into the car and made Jane scoot over, so he could drive. He said he
and Mona would be getting a divorce before they got married, and Jane
would carry his briefcase like she was their lawyer. But we would go
to Courtroom 22 on the fifth floor instead.”

“Did Jane agree?”

“At first. But then we got
near the courthouse, and Jane said two men in a car were following
us. They kept coming faster and faster, and then they tried to get in
front of us, and they bumped the car.”

“What did Mr. Morgan do?”

“He got all nervous, and
kept trying to go fast and keep the car straight. Jane said to him,
‘Well? What’s it going to be?’ and he said, ‘I
can’t get them into the building. It’s got to be me.’
He was scared. He looked pale and sick and sweaty.”

“And Jane?”

“She was quiet. He drove
to the parking lot and stopped. Mona kissed him, and Jane yanked me
out the door and we started running.”

“Did you see what Mr.
Morgan did after you were out of the car?”

“I heard this loud bang,
and I turned around and it looked like what he had done was go
backwards into the other car. One of the men jumped out and started
hitting him. He tried to fight but he wasn’t good at it. And
the other man got out of the car and ran after us, so Dennis tried to
tackle him, but the man kicked him, and the first one grabbed him
around the neck. I didn’t see any more because Jane and Mona
and I were running and I tripped, but Jane held my hand and kept me
from falling. We ran up the steps.”

“Did anyone try to stop
you?”

“There was a man on the
other side of the glass door, and he saw us and put his foot against
it so it wouldn’t open. Jane didn’t stop. She let go of
me and hit it with her shoulder and stuck her purse in it when it
opened a little. The man put his arm there to push the purse out, but
as soon as his arm was in there she jerked the purse out by the strap
and shut the door on his arm. When he pulled the handle to get his
arm out, she pushed the door into his face and we ran on.”

“Anybody else?”

“There were men right by
the elevator, and they started coming toward us. We ran up the
stairs. I counted four flights, but there was a door and it only had
a two on it. We ran through it, and when we passed the elevator Jane
pushed the button and ran to another staircase, and we got up to the
third floor. We got to the fourth floor, and we heard a door below us
slam open against the wall, and some men were running up after us.
Mona was breathing hard and then she was crying too. She touched my
arm at the top of the next landing and said, ‘This is my stop.
Keep going. I love you, Timmy.’”

“What did Jane say?”

“Nothing. She just looked
at her, and then we ran up to the fifth floor. Just when we got to
the top, I looked back and saw Mona on the stairs. She was holding on
to both railings and kicking at these men. I saw one of them reaching
out like he was trying to hug her. But right then, the door that said
five swung open right in front of us. It was one of the men that was
by the elevator. He looked surprised, and Jane just punched him and
kept going.”

“She hit him in the jaw?”
The judge could sense Ambrose’s raised eyebrow again.

“No. In the neck. Then we
were on the fifth floor, and we ran down this long hallway. When we
got to the corner I could see ‘twenty to thirty’ painted
on the wall with an arrow pointing to the left, but the door we had
used to get there opened up again and three big men were running
after us. Jane jerked me around the corner and said, ‘Run to
the room that says twenty-two. Don’t stop for anybody until
you’re right in the front where the judge sits, and yell, “I’m
Timothy Phillips.”‘ I tried to say something, but she
said, ‘Don’t talk, just run.’”

Judge Kramer pushed the stop
button and sat in his dark office. He had been on the bench when the
little boy had burst through the doors and run up the aisle
screaming. The bailiff had made a reasonably competent attempt to
head him off, but he had actually touched the bench and yelled, “I'm
Tim Phillips.” What had happened in the hallway Judge Kramer
had heard from one of the policemen who had piled out of the
adjoining courtrooms to quell the disturbance.

Judge Kramer pressed the
intercom button on his telephone.

“Yes, Judge?” came
his assistant’s voice.

“Where are they holding
this ‘Jane’ woman?”

“I think they took her for
medical treatment to County-USC. I’ll find out if she’s
in the jail ward and let you know.”

“No,” Kramer said.
“Just call the precinct and tell them I want to see her.”

“Would you like a
conference room at the jail?”

“Have them bring her
here.”

The male police officer was tall
and rangy, and the female was short and blond with her hair drawn up
in the back and cinched in that way they all knew how to do. The
department never had all-male teams transport a female prisoner
anymore, so the judge should have been used to it, but the pairs
still seemed to him like married couples from a planet where people
wore uniforms. They ushered the prisoner into his chambers. When her
face came into the light he felt his breath suck in. He had never
gotten used to seeing a young woman’s face with bruises and
cuts and blackened eyes. He tried to see past them.

She was not quite what he had
heard described on the tape. She was tall, as tall as he was if he
stood up, and this realization made him intuit that it was better not
to, so he stayed down behind his big desk. Her hair was black and
hung loose to a place below her shoulder blades, but that probably
wasn’t the way she wore it; they had combed it out because they
always searched women’s hair. He could see that Timmy’s
description was not wrong, just uninformed. This woman had the
strange, angular beauty he associated with fashion models: it was
striking, but geometric and cold. The judge’s taste ran more to
women like his late wife and the little policewoman, who looked round
and soft and warm. The woman’s hands were cuffed in front of
her instead of behind, which meant they weren’t taking all the
precautions, but the police officers were wary: the policewoman kept
a hand at her left elbow, and the man was a step behind and to her
right, leaving just enough room to swing his club.

Judge Kramer said, “Thank
you very much, officers. We’ve got some coffee in the outer
office, and I keep soft drinks in the little refrigerator under the
water cooler. I’ll be finished with the prisoner in about
fifteen minutes.”

The policewoman said, “Your
Honor, we should mention – ”

He interrupted, “I know. I
spoke with the arresting officer. Has she hurt anyone since she’s
been in custody?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll chance
it.”

The prisoner held out her hands,
and the male officer unlocked the cuffs, took them off, and said to
no one in particular, “We’ll be right outside.”

When they had closed the door,
Judge Kramer said to her, “Sit down, please.”

The woman sat in the chair in
front of the desk.

Judge Kramer probed for a way to
break the silence. “I hear you’re one of those people who
could kill me with a pencil.”

She said simply, “If I am,
then I wouldn’t need a pencil.” She looked at the tape
recorder on his desk. “Is that running?”

He said, “I want to assure
you that no record will be made of this conversation. I just listened
to a deposition of Timothy Phillips, and I decided that the only
person left who can answer the questions I have is you. Mona Turley
and Dennis Morgan are dead.”

She nodded silently and watched
him.

“What do you know about
the child’s situation?”

“Who are you? Why are you
the one who has questions?”

His eyes widened involuntarily,
as though someone had thrown a glass of water in his face. “I’m
sorry,” he said. “When you’ve been a judge for a
few years, you’re used to being the only one in the room
everyone takes at face value. My name is John Kramer. I’m the
judge who was presiding in Courtroom 22. We hadn’t gotten to
the petition to declare Timothy Phillips legally dead when he ran in
and disrupted my court. For the moment, the matter is still
undecided, and I’ve left it that way.”

“Why?”

“First I had to recess
while the officers took you away. Then I had to adjourn for a few
days to give time to the authorities who can verify Timothy’s
claim. In a day or so, oddly enough, I have to set a date to give the
petitioners the opportunity to refute the claim – fingerprints,
blood tests, and all. Then I have to rule on it.”

“Will you be the one who
decides what happens to him after that?”

He shook his head. “Not
directly. At the moment he’s in the care of a very protective
woman from Children’s Services named Nina Coffey. After a time
there will be criminal cases – probably several of them. There
will be a family court case to decide who is granted guardianship of
Timmy. There will be some sort of civil action to settle the
disposition of the trust. I can influence the direction some of those
cases take if I find out the truth and get it on the record so it
can’t be ignored. I’m asking what you know because I
don’t have much time and I need to know where to begin. Once I
rule on the petition that’s before me, it’s out of my
hands.”

“Is any of this legal?”

“What I’m doing is
so contrary to legal procedure that it has no name.”

She sat erect in the chair and
met his gaze steadily while she decided. “He was a ward of his
grandmother because his parents were killed in a car crash. She was
old at the time – about eighty. Whoever she hired to watch him
didn’t. Along came Raymond and Emily Decker, and he
disappeared. I have no way of knowing what was going on in their
minds at the time. They may have been kidnappers who stalked him from
birth, or they may have been one of those half-crazy couples who
create their own little world that doesn’t need to incorporate
all of the facts in front of their eyes. If you read the old
newspaper reports, it sounds as though maybe they just found him
wandering around alone in a remote area of a county park, picked him
up, and then convinced themselves that he was better off with them
than with anybody who let a two-year-old get that lost. I’ve
tried to find out, and so did Mona and Dennis, but what we learned
was full of contradictions.”

“What sorts of
contradictions?”

“Timmy says they sent
pictures of him to his grandmother, sometimes holding a newspaper,
sometimes with his fingerprints. He doesn’t know what the
letters said. If the Deckers knew where to send the letters, then
they knew who he was. But I can’t tell whether it was a
straight ransom demand or they were trying to keep him officially
alive so he could claim his inheritance when he grew up, or whether
they were just being kind to an old lady by letting her know her
grandson was okay.”

“What do you know about
the grandmother?”

“From what Dennis Morgan
said, the police stopped looking. That means they never saw the
letters. Grandma kept looking, so maybe she got them. She must have
believed he would turn up eventually, because she tied up all the
family money in a living trust for him and made a business-management
firm named Hoffen-Bayne the trustee. She died a few years ago.”

“Before or after Raymond
and Emily Decker?”

“Before. But I’m not
the best source for dates and addresses. I’m sure if you don’t
have it in the papers on your desk yet, it’ll be in the next
batch. Anyway, I don’t think she hired somebody to kill them
for kidnapping her grandson.”

“You’re the only
source of information I have right now. Who did kill them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who do you
think
did
it?”

“When someone killed the
Deckers, they also stole all of Timmy’s belongings, every
picture of him, and a lot of paper. If you’re looking for
somebody, you would want the photographs. But they took his toys,
clothes, everything. That’s a lot of work. The only reason I
can think of for doing that is to hide the fact that he was alive –
that a little boy lived there. Maybe they did such a good job of
wiping off their own prints that they got all of his too, as a matter
of course. I doubt it.”

“Who would want to
accomplish that?”

She hesitated, and he could tell
she was preparing to be disbelieved. “What I’m telling
you is not from personal knowledge. It’s what Dennis Morgan
told me. This company, Hoffen-Bayne, got to administer a fortune of
something like a hundred million dollars. They would get a commission
of at least two percent a year, or two million, for that. They also
got to invest the money any way they pleased, and that gave them
power. There are some fair-sized companies you can control for that
kind of investment. As long as Timmy was lost, the trust would
continue. You’re a judge. You tell me what would happen if
Timmy turned up in California.”