The Bookman's Wake (10 page)

N
ext case.“

”The matter of Eleanor Jane Rigby, Your Honor.
Filing number one three seven five nine six.“

“Is this the prisoner?…are you Eleanor Jane
Rigby?” “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you understand the nature of this
proceeding?”

“I think so.”

“Let’s be sure. This is an extradition
hearing, to determine whether you will be returned to the
state of New Mexico to face criminal charges outstanding
there. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You may contest the extradition or waive that
right. Do you have an attorney?”

“A public defender, in Taos.”

“But here, in Seattle?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Would you like to consult with an attorney
here?”

“I don’t see any point in it.”

“You wish to waive that right?”

“Sure…might as well.”

“Do you understand, Miss Rigby, that commencing
any legal proceeding without an attorney is a risky and
unwise decision?”

“It won’t matter.”

“So you wish to go ahead.”

“Sure. I just want to get it over with.”

“Very well. Mr. Wallace?”

“Yes, Your Honor. All we want to do is get her out
of here.”

“I can understand that. Do you have the
extradition waiver form?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Thank you. For the record, I am now handing to
the prisoner, Eleanor Jane Rigby, the consent form as
required by Revised Code of Washington, title ten
dash…uh, eighty-nine dash…”

“Uh, oh three oh, Your Honor.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wallace. Will the prisoner please
sign where the bailiff indicates?”

“What happens if I don’t sign
this?”

“We will hold you here for up to sixty days, New
Mexico will make a formal filing of its demand, and there
will be a full hearing.”

“And in the end I’ll go back
anyway.”

“The court cannot advise you of that, Miss Rigby.
That’s what an attorney would do.”

“Where do I sign?…Here?”

“Let the record show that the prisoner is signing
the waiver consent form in the presence of the
court.”

“And at this time I am tending the document to the
court for your signature, Your Honor.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wallace. The prisoner will be
remanded to the King County jail, until such time as the
New Mexico authorities send someone to escort her
back.”

“Your Honor?”

“Was there something else, Mr. Wallace?”

“We’d like to get her out of here tomorrow.
We’ve been informed by New Mexico that they
can’t send a deputy until at least Tuesday of next
week.”

“Is that a particular problem?”

“It’s a potential problem. Today is
what?…Thursday. That means she’ll be in our
custody five days and nights. I know I don’t have to
remind Your Honor about potential problems with young
female prisoners. We don’t want another Bender case
on our hands.”

“Is there a special reason to think we might have
such an incident?”

“I understand this prisoner has a history of
suicide attempts.”

“Is that true, Miss Rigby?”

“I wouldn’t call it a history…I cut my
wrist once.”

“Your Honor—”

“I understand, Mr. Wallace. Nobody wants a replay
of Bender. What do you suggest?”

“We have a man here to take her back.”

“It’s New Mexico’s responsibility.
Will Washington be reimbursed for the costs of such a
trip?”

“It won’t cost us anything.”

“Tell me about it…gently, please.”

“Shortly after the arrest of the prisoner and her
transfer here from East King County, our office was
contacted by a Mr. Cliff Janeway of Denver, Colorado, who
was sent here to arrest the suspect and escort her
back.”

“Sent by whom?”

“An agent of the bail bondsman.”

The judge closed her eyes. “Mr. Wallace, are you
seriously asking me to release this young woman in the care
of a bounty hunter?”

“He’s not a bounty hunter, Your
Honor.”

“Please, then…what is he?”

“He’s a rare-book dealer in Denver. More to
the point, he’s a former officer of the Denver Police
Department with more than fifteen years
experience.”

“Is Mr. Janeway in this court?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She motioned with her hand. “Come.”

I walked down into the arena.

“You are Mr. Cliff Janeway?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And you were engaged, as Mr. Wallace said, to
arrest the defendant and return her to New
Mexico.”

“Yes.”

“Do you have papers?…Let me see them,
please.”

“We’ve checked him out thoroughly, Your
Honor. We’ve talked with a Detective Hennessey at the
Denver Police, who was his partner for several years, and
to a Mr. Steed, who is chief of detectives. Both gentlemen
spoke uncompromisingly of his dedication and
character.”

“All right, Mr. Wallace, I get the picture. Be
quiet a minute and let me read this stuff, will
you?”

Silence.

The judge cleared her throat. “Mr.
Janeway?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You were hired by a Mr. Slater of Denver, who was
representing the Martin Bailbondsmen of Taos, is that
correct?”

“Yes, it is.”

She blinked and looked at me through her glasses.
“I can’t help wondering, sir, how a police
detective becomes a dealer in rare books.”

“He gets very lucky, Your Honor.”

She smiled. “Have you ever done any bounty-hunter
work?”

“No, ma’am.”

“This is not something you do for a
living?”

“Not at all.”

“How did you come to accept this case?”

“It was offered to me. Mr. Slater didn’t
have time to come out of town, and he asked me to come in
his place.”

“How did you propose to escort Miss Rigby back to
New Mexico?”

“By air.”

She nodded her approval. Just to be sure, she said,
“No three-day trips by automobile?”

“No, ma’am.”

“What does New Mexico have to say, Mr.
Wallace?”

“Well, naturally they’d love to come get
her—you know how those sheriff’s boys love to
travel. But they understand our problem too.”

“They have no objection to Mr. Janeway?”

“They’re comfortable with him. One or two of
them know him, as a matter of fact.”

“What about you, Miss Rigby? Do you have any
objection to being escorted by Mr. Janeway?”

“I don’t care who takes me.”

“We sure don’t want to keep her any longer
than we have to, Your Honor.”

“All right. The prisoner is remanded to the
custody of the jailer, who will release her to Mr. Janeway
upon presentation of the papers
and
the airline tickets. I hope I’m making myself clear,
Mr. Janeway. I’m holding you personally responsible
for this prisoner’s safe passage. I’m not
interested in any deal you may have made with
this…what’s his name?…Slater, in Denver.
You baby-sit this one all the way into Taos. Are we clear
on that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Next case.”

T
he Rigbys sat in stony silence in the first row of Judge
Maria McCoy’s court. Archie Moon sat beside Crystal,
directly behind the defendant’s table. The room was
nearly empty beyond the second row: there were a couple of
legal eagles—people who drift from court to court,
endlessly fascinated by the process—and across the
aisle sat a young blond woman with a steno pad. I was
surprised to find even that much Seattle interest in the
plight of a defendant in a legal action thirteen hundred
miles removed.

“I shouldn’t even talk to you, you son of a
bitch,” Crystal said.

I had found them in the cafeteria, eating sand-wiches
out of a vending machine, and I sat with them and tried to
explain how the deceit had begun, how the lie kept growing
until the appearance of the cops put an end to it. We got
past it quickly. It was my intent they now embraced, and
they gripped my hand with the desperation of shipwreck
survivors who come upon a lifeboat in choppy, hostile
waters. I told them what was going to happen and what I was
going to try to do. I would ferry Eleanor into Taos, meet
with her lawyer, and see if any mitigating circumstances
might be uncovered that would sway the court toward
leniency. There had been a time, not too long ago, when I
had done such work for a living, and I had been good at it.
But I hadn’t even heard Eleanor’s side of
things yet, so I didn’t know what was possible.

“I’ve got to tell you,” Crystal said,
“we don’t have any money to pay you. None at
all.”

“Call it one I owe you. If I can help in any way,
it’ll be my pleasure.”

Crystal asked if she should try to come to New Mexico. I
told her not yet: let me get my feet on the ground and see
how the wind was blowing. Gaston Rigby watched us talk, his
sad and weary eyes moving from her face to mine. “If
it does become a question of money,” he said,
“you let us know, we’ll get it somehow.”
Archie Moon said he had a little money put aside, enough to
get him to Taos if I thought he could do any good. I told
him to keep that thought on the back burner and I’d
let him know.

Then there was nothing more for them to do but take the
long ride home, face a house that would never again seem so
empty, and wait out the days and weeks and months for the
justice system to do what it would. For me the case had
taken on a kind of inevitable flow. Everything about it
felt orchestrated, as if my part in it had been
preordained. A woman named Joy Bender had killed herself in
the Seattle jailhouse and had named me her chief
beneficiary. The Bender case was an ugly one, full of
posthumous rape-and-abuse charges. A letter had been left
with Bender’s mother, who had released it to the
press with a raging broadside at the system. In time the
Bender letter had been discredited as the work of a sick
and angry mind. The mother had written it herself, but the
headlines were a cop’s worst nightmare for a month.
Even now there was widespread public belief that the true
facts had been covered up and the mother was being framed
to clear the real villains, the jailers and the cops.
Things like that do happen, often enough that people retain
their disbelief when a case against the cops collapses like
a house of cards. So the DA was primed and ready when I
walked in and made a case that sounded halfway legit. When
I mentioned in passing my real concern that Rigby might
harm herself, he was all ears. When I told him she had
already tried it once, this hardened man who had seen
everything shivered and drew in his wagons. And the
overworked and bludgeoned system in Seattle had bent a rule
or two and sent New Mexico’s problem packing with the
fastest reliable messenger—me.

I was still sitting at the table in the cafeteria when a
shadow passed over my left shoulder, too close to be moving
on by. I looked up and into the face of the young blond
woman I had seen taking notes in the courtroom earlier.

“Mr. Janeway.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Trish Aandahl,
Seattle Times
.”

I gave her a long, wary look. “This must be a slow
news day. I didn’t think major metropolitan dailies
bothered with simple extradition hearings.”

“Nothing about this case is simple, and everything
about it interests me. May I sit down?”

She did, without waiting for the invitation. The steno
pad was still clutched tight in her left hand.

“Listen,” I said. “Before you draw
that Bic out of the holster, I don’t want to be
interviewed, I’ve got nothing to say.”

“May I just ask a couple of questions?”

“You can ask anything you want, but I’m not
going to let you put me in print saying something dumb. The
fact is, I don’t know anything about this case that
could possibly be worth your time. And I learned a long
time ago that when you don’t know anything, the last
guy, or gal, you want to see is a reporter.”

“You’ve been burned.”

“Basted, baked, and broiled. There was a time when
Blackened Janeway was the main lunch course at the Denver
Press Club.”

She smiled, with just the right touch of regret. She was
good, I thought, and that made her dangerous. She made you
want to apologize for not being her sacrificial lamb.

“I’m not a hard-ass,” I said by way of
apology. “I like the press. Most of the reporters I
know are fine people, great drinking buddies. I even read
newspapers once in a while. But I’ve lived long
enough to know how your game works.”

“How does it work?”

“If you quote me accurately, your obligation ends
right there, even if I don’t know what the hell
I’m talking about. My viewpoint gets run through your
filter system and I wind up holding the bag.”

She flashed a bitter little smile and I took a second,
deeper look at her. She was one of those not-quite-rare but
uncommon women, a brown-eyed blonde, like the wonderful
Irene in Galsworthy’s sadly neglected
Forsyte Saga
. Her hair was the color of wheat in September. Her face
was pleasantly round without being cherubic: her mouth was
full. She was in her thirties, about Rita’s age, not
beautiful but striking, a face carved by a craftsman who
had his own ideas of what beauty was.

Belatedly I recognized her name. “You wrote the
book: the Grayson biography.”

“I wrote the book,” she confessed.

“I should be asking you the questions. You
probably know more than I do.”

“That may be. That’s what I’m trying
to find out.”

“I keep telling you, I don’t know anything.
I’m just a friend of the court, delivering a prisoner
back to the bar.”

“Right,” she said with a tweak of sarcastic
skepticism. She opened her purse and dropped the steno pad
inside it. “Off the record.”

“Everything I’ve got to say I said on the
record in open court.”

“You didn’t say why you’re really here
and what you’re doing.”

“It’s irrelevant. I’m irrelevant,
that’s what you need to understand.”

“Who is Slater?”

“You’re not listening to me.”

“There’s someone else involved in this.
Slater’s not just working for a Taos bonding
company.”

I shrugged and looked at a crack in the ceiling.

“I made some calls after the hearing. You left
deep footprints in Denver.”

“That’s what they said about King Kong. On
him it was a compliment. As a gorilla he was hard to
beat.”

I waited but she missed her cue.

“You were supposed to say, ‘That gives you a
goal to shoot for.’ If we’re going to play
Wits, the new Parker Brothers game, you’ve got to be
sharp.”

She gave me a look of interested amusement.

“We’ll put it down to midafternoon
sag,” I said.

“You are a handful, aren’t you? My sources
in Denver didn’t exaggerate much.”

“So who are these people and what are they saying
about me?”

“Who they are isn’t important. They told me
what anybody could get with a few phone calls and a friend
or two where it counts.”

“Read it back to me. Let’s see how good you
are.”

“You were with DPD almost fifteen years. Exemplary
record, actually outstanding until that caper a while back.
You have a fine-tuned but romantic sense of justice. It
should always work, the good guys should always win. Then
the end would never have to justify the means, a cop could
always work within the rules and evil would always take the
big fall. How am I doing so far?”

“You must be on the right track, you’re
starting to annoy me.”

“You asked for it. Shall I go on?”

“You mean there’s more?”

“You have an intense dislike of oppressive
procedure. It galled you when the courts let creeps and
thugs walk on technicalities. You nailed a guy one time on
an end run that cops in Denver still talk
about…probably illegal but they never stuck you with
it. So the guy went up.”

“He was a serial rapist, for Christ’s sake.
He got what he needed.”

“You’re getting annoyed all over again,
aren’t you? They told me you would. That case still
bothers you, it’s the one time you really stepped
over the line and let the end justify the means. Your
fellow cops remember it with a good deal of admiration, but
it rankles you to this day, the way you had to get that
guy.”

“I sleep just fine. My only regret is that I
didn’t get the son of a bitch a year earlier, before
he started using the knife.”

“You’re a guy out of time, Janeway. You were
a good cop, but you’d‘ve been great fifty years
ago, when there weren’t any rules.”

“There’s probably a lot I’d appreciate
about life fifty years ago.”

“You don’t like telephones, television, or
computers. I’ll bet Call Waiting drives you
crazy.”

“People who load up their lives with crap like
that have an inflated sense of their own importance. You
might not believe this, but I’ve never missed an
important phone call.”

“I do believe it. It’s all in the eye of the
beholder.”

“If it’s that important, they always call
back.” I looked at her hard. “You really are
getting on my nerves.”

“Good. If I can’t get you to talk to me, at
least I can ruin your day. If I tell you enough about
yourself, maybe you’ll understand
something.”

“And what is that?”

“If you don’t talk to me, somebody else
will.”

“I can’t help what other people tell
you.”

“They tell me you’ve got this code you live
by and you’ve got it down pat. You see a lot of
things in black and white: if you give your word, people
can take it to the bank. The problem is, you expect the
same thing out of others. You tend to be hard and
unforgiving when someone breaks the code. When you come up
against a brick wall, your tendency is to go right on
through it. You had little finesse when it came to official
policy and no patience with politics.”

“I can’t think of anything offhand
that’s as evil as politics. It turns good men into
bad all the time.”

“You spend a lot of your time alone. You trust no
one in a pinch as much as you do your own self.
You’ve got such self-confidence that sometimes it
strikes others as arrogance. Your reputation as a smart-ass
is as high as the Rockies. Richly deserved would be my
guess.“

“I work on it every day. I hire four people to sit
on a panel, test me once a week, and tell me how I’m
doing. Lately I’ve been unable to afford the sex
therapist, but you could probably tell that. I don’t
feel that my day’s properly under way unless
I’ve run three miles and verbally abused someone of
far less mental dexterity than myself—preferably in
public, where the scars of their humiliation will be
shattering and damn near impossible to shake
off.”

She gave a little smile. “Actually, you’re a
champion of the underdog. The strong never abuse the weak
in your presence.”

“Now I’m a regular Robin Hood. You’ll
have to make up your mind.”

“You’ve got quite a name as a fighter.
People don’t mess with you much.”

“Some have.”

“But they didn’t come back for
seconds.”

“Not since I killed that blind crippled boy last
summer.”

She laughed. “You’re an American original,
aren’t you? Listen to me, Janeway. I mean you no
harm. I come in friendship and peace.”

“That’s what Custer said to the
Indians.”

“You and I are probably a lot alike.”

“That’s what Sitting Bull said back to
Custer.”

“And like the Indians and the cavalry, we’d
probably end up killing each other. But I’ll tell you
this, it’ll all be up front. I never break my
word.” She leaned forward and looked me straight in
the eyes. Our faces were closer than strangers ought to be.
“Who is Slater?”

I looked at her hard and gave her nothing.

“Maybe it would make a difference if I told you
what else I know.”

“What’s that?”

“That Darryl and Richard Grayson were
murdered.”

Her sense of timing couldn’t have been better: I
felt the tingle of her words all the way to my toes.
Without taking her eyes from mine, she reached into her bag
and took out a card. “Both my numbers are here if you
decide you’d like to talk. Anytime, all off the
record. If not, have a nice flight to Taos.”

She got up and walked out.