The Hanging Judge (3 page)

“Now, Allie,” he drawled, “remember what you learned at the academy.” Sergeant DiMasi tossed the brick over the fence, stepped between Alex and the slumping kid. Two officers ran over and yanked the suspect up, not too gently, jerking his arms around for the cuffs.

“First, read the arrestee his rights.” DiMasi looked over at where the kid was being dragged toward the gap in the fence. “Then, and only then, proceed to pound the living crap out of him.”

The sergeant pointed at the boy’s foot, where a scrap of board was dragging along behind him. “Anyway, looks like our munchkin stepped on a nail.” He walked off, adjusting his gun belt and tucking his shirt in, then looked back over his shoulder. “Get yourself looked at.”

The black officer trotted up, giving Alex his gun and a sick look. Alex recognized him now, Carl somebody, but the world was turning very strange, waltzing around at the edges. It was dawning on Alex that he hurt in several places, that he was having trouble catching his breath, and that soon he was going to need to sit down.

“Man, Allie,” Carl was saying. “You need a dentist or something. You look like Dracula’s fat-assed little brother.”

Alex bent over with his hands on his knees. Drops of blood and sweat were making stains in the dust. The dots of blood were purple; the sweat spots were chocolate brown. Was he going to throw up?

“When you call my wife, do me a favor, will you?”

“What’s that?”

“Tell her I might not live.”

3

O
n the evening of what came to be known locally as “the Walnut Street Massacre,” Judge Norcross broke off his late commute home to pull into the parking lot of a rural ATM. His gloom at the life sentence he’d imposed that morning still had not lifted and, adding to his distraction, he could almost hear his poor dog pacing on the kitchen tiles, urging him to hurry home and let her out.

Inside the glass kiosk, Norcross set his car keys on the metal shelf and let his eyes drift up into the deepening late-afternoon sky. Would the Bureau of Prisons find a spot for the defendant in Massachusetts or Connecticut, somewhere his family might at least visit once in a while? Texas or California was more likely.

As the machine snapped up his card and began displaying instructions, Norcross heard his cell phone ringing back in his car. He had a monster securities case set for hearing the next morning, but there was a chance the thing might settle, and his courtroom deputy, Ruby Johnson, had promised to get in touch if there was any news. The call might save him from a late night poring over SEC filings.

Norcross decided to abort the ATM transaction and take the call, but even though he pushed all the correct buttons to get his card back, the machine took its time. The phone was already on its fourth ring.

In mounting frustration, Norcross made his fatal mistake. He abruptly shoved the kiosk’s door open, scuffed a clump of dirt and gravel underneath the frame to hold it in place, and took three quick steps to retrieve his cell. Just as he plucked it out of the front console—and caught the click of Ruby hanging up—a heavy log truck rumbled by. The vehicle’s vibrations loosened the kiosk’s door, and it closed just as Norcross, lunging back, grabbed for the handle. He was locked out.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” He tapped his forehead against the kiosk’s cool metal frame. When had he become such a total idiot? There was no rush to get the call. Ruby would certainly call him at home later, or he could have phoned her back. Muttering insults at himself, he tried several other credit cards in the door’s security slot but got no buzz. Four feet away on the other side of the glass, his card was now sticking out of the ATM like a mocking tongue. The machine beeped derisively. His car keys still lay on the metal shelf.

“Son of a buck!” He looked around to see if anyone was watching, then kicked the doorframe several times. It didn’t budge. A couple of cars flew past, but no one stopped to assist or upbraid him.

An old sugar maple was standing at the margin of the crumbling asphalt, waving its yellow and orange leaves against the sky, and the judge lifted his face up to it for consolation. There was a delicious smell of smoke from someone burning leaves nearby, almost certainly in violation of some local regulation. He sighed and was on the point of calling one of his deputy marshals to come fetch him when a lipstick-red Prius pulled up.

The driver was a woman, quite a good-looking woman. Norcross glanced, trying not to be too obvious, at her slim thighs and nicely rounded hips as she unfolded herself from the car. She had on dark glasses, which gave her the blank look of a Secret Service agent or a hit man. She stopped a few steps in front of him and made a sweeping gesture with her left arm; he was blocking the door. She had her ATM card in her right hand.

“Sorry,” Norcross said, stepping to one side. “You won’t believe what’s happened.”

The lady ducked her chin and peeped at him over her glasses. “I bet not.”

She was wearing a brown leather jacket and a moss green sweater that neither concealed nor overemphasized her pleasing architecture. The sort of woman who knew she was attractive, knew he was noticing, and knew it was no big deal. Probably not a CIA agent after all. A doctor or therapist of some sort, he guessed, or a teacher.

“It’s just”—Norcross pointed at the beeping machine—“I’ve locked my card inside.” He paused and looked at her. “Not my brightest moment.”

She took off the shades, which made her face less daunting. Her eyes were intelligent and, perhaps, amused. Her light brown hair was pushed back over her ears. Slipping the glasses into her pocket, she said, “So you want me to rescue you.” It wasn’t a question.

“I’d really appreciate it.”

She tilted her head to one side. “I need to think about this.” She pointed at him. “Stay.” She inserted her card and opened the door.

This was stupid but interesting. Should he shove his way in? He had a good six or eight inches on her. But the doorway was small—he would have had to wrestle her aside—and the judge’s good manners made any pushy move of this sort out of the question. He’d wait and see what happened. She went in; the door closed.

Inside, the lady noticed his car keys on the metal shelf and held them up.

“Right. Those are also mine.” Norcross sniffed and pulled on the end of his nose. “Been a tough day.”

The lady extracted his ATM card from the machine and held it up with another inquiring look.

“Exactly,” Norcross said.

While she worked her way through the usual procedure to get her cash, the lady kept jingling his keys in her hand and looking over at him through the glass as though he were someone she might know. This made Norcross uncomfortable. His picture was in the paper a lot. Had he sentenced a friend of hers? Some relative? Her?

She put the cash in her purse and then stood, continuing to look at him.

“Some guy in a suit hanging around the cash machine,” she said. “I almost didn’t stop.”

“Sorry.”

At this point, she startled him by sucking on her lower lip and turning up the corners of her mouth in a way that made her face look charmingly goofy. The expression passed quickly.

“Okay,” she said. “Here’s the deal.” She held up his keys in one hand and his card in the other. “I ask you three questions. If you answer them correctly, I give you your stuff back.”

“Excuse me?”

He’d heard what she said, but the situation was becoming bewilderingly weird. It had been years since a pretty female had joshed him like this. An odd, fizzing sensation rose in his chest.

She dropped her hands and spoke a little louder. “You answer three questions, and you get your stuff. Easy as pie.”

“Is this really necessary?” Norcross asked, trying to sound breezy. “It’s just that …” He hesitated. “My dog’s waiting.” He tipped his head to the west. “And it’s getting late.”

The sky had turned peach and turquoise in the late afternoon, and the bluish light inside the ATM was giving the lady a strange glow. A surge of wind had the sugar maple fluttering.

“This won’t take long.” She drew in a breath to put her first question, but the judge, on an impulse that startled him, held up his hands.

“Wait. I get to ask you a question for each one you ask me.”

“You’re not in a very good position to bargain.”

Norcross folded his arms. “You’re going to have to open that door some time, kiddo.”

She did the thing with her lower lip again. It was so nutty the judge had to work hard to keep himself from smiling.

“Okay,” she said finally. “But I get to go first.”

“Fine, fire away. First one who misses picks up the tab.”

She put a finger on her cheek. Clear nail polish, with fingernails well shaped and not too long.

“What is your name?”

Norcross gave her his name and watched as she confirmed it on the card.

“Okay,” he said. “My turn.”

“Nope. We agreed I get to ask my questions first.”

“You mean you get to ask all your questions before I get to ask any of mine? How fair is that?”

“My answers are ‘Yes’ and ‘Quite.’ That’s two for you. Back to me.”

“What?”

“Rhetorical questions don’t count. As I say, my turn. What is your mission?”

Norcross broke off his indignation and blew out a relieved breath. His older brother, Raymond, had force-fed him British comedies all during their boyhood, and he could almost recite the end of
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
.

“What is my name and what is my mission. Right. You’re not allowed to ask me the square root of anything.”

“Come on, um …” She consulted the card. “David. What is your mission?”

“Oh,” he rummaged through his mental files for something clever and, as usual, found nothing. “Just, I suppose, to get home before my dog explodes.”

She dropped her arms in disappointment. “That’s it? Your dog? Oh David, David … ”

“Okay, and to bring truth and justice to the American way.” He paused. “And if at all possible to locate the Holy Grail.”

“Derivative, but acceptable. I’ll hold my last one. You go.”

They’d somehow inched closer during the questions, and there was less than the length of a yardstick between them now. Her green eyes were looking straight into his, and her eyebrows were raised, challenging him to make her laugh. Since he could think of nothing funny, Norcross decided to be crafty.

“What question would you most enjoy having me ask you?”

“Hmm. ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ ”

“Scrambled eggs. Give me the keys.”

“Nice try, David! That was my answer, not my question. I still have one more.”

“ ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ That’s what you’d most enjoy having me ask you?”

“Sorry, you’ve had your three. Let me think now.”

She looked up at the ceiling and weighed the final question, the one that might get him flung, like one of Monty Python’s hapless crusaders, into a bottomless crevasse.

“No mathematics now,” Norcross said. “Or song swallow questions.”

She dropped her eyes and regarded him coolly. “Are you married, or seeing anybody?”

It was not, objectively, a tough question. Still, as the judge struggled to compose an answer with just the right ironical flip, the sound of distant sirens distracted him. He couldn’t help wondering, as he always did, what catastrophe was unfolding out there and whether it was going to end up in his courtroom.

4

T
he next morning, the sun, still in a cloudless sky, dropped a slanting column of apricot light on Frank Baldwin, who was staring at his computer screen.

“Sheeesus!” he groaned. “No one should have to die wearing pea-green tennies!”

Gritty urban tragedies like yesterday’s drive-by in the Holyoke Flats still fascinated Frank. He’d spent seven years as a city-desk reporter for
The Hartford Courant
before escaping to law school, badly frayed and in need of a change. Now he was in his second year as one of two full-time law clerks for Judge David S. Norcross.

Frank accepted that he was not conventionally handsome; he had a beer gut and a bad habit of sucking on the end of his scruffy blond mustache. Yet somehow he’d hit the lottery of life; he was a happy man. Pictures of his wife, Trish, and their bug-eyed four-year-old son, Brady, cluttered Frank’s desk. Scrawled crayon drawings of fish, or perhaps horses, decorated his walls and bookshelves, giving his office the look of a kindergarten art room.

“What’s so awful?”

Frank swiveled to see Eva Meyers, whose office was next door, poking her head into his doorway. Barely five feet tall, she had a well-balanced gymnast’s posture and a thick topping of curly brown hair. Her horn-rimmed glasses seemed too large for her face. This was her first day as Frank’s brand-new co-clerk, replacing a man who’d decamped for a corporate law firm in Worcester. In her right hand, Eva was holding something heavy, like a paperweight.

“Another gang banger kisses the pavement in Holyoke. But this time, they nailed a bystander, too. Take a look.”

He tapped the mouse, and a close-up of the hatch of an ambulance appeared with a body being loaded in. Two limp feet with green Nikes protruded from the end of a sheet.

“Ginger Daley O’Connor, a pediatric nurse volunteering at the Walnut Street Clinic,” he read. “Granddaughter of Martin Daley, former mayor of Holyoke. Forty-two, three kids. Youngest eleven. Oh
man
!”

“It was on the news. Terrible.” Eva flexed her arm with the heavy object. “Can I … ?”

“Says here she was bending over to pet a puppy when she got smacked. That’s a nifty little journalistic detail.” Frank shook his head and added, more quietly, “At least they didn’t shoot the damn dog. We’d have riots.” He closed the screen. “Sorry. What’s up?”

Frank noticed his co-clerk’s eyes moving around his office. Her mouth was open, and she was beginning to smile.

“You have a child, I see. A child who draws pictures.”

“If you like those, I have a couple scrapbooks here, just his better stuff.” He started to pull out a drawer. “We don’t save everything.”

“That’s okay.” Eva removed her glasses and rubbed her right eye in rapid circles. After a few seconds, she continued. “Why is the Bar out here so ratty about our judge?” She replaced her glasses and leaned against the doorframe. “My girlfriend says he’s not all that popular.”