Chasing justice, p.7
Chasing Justice, page 7
His eyes scrunched but not shut, calculating, thinking. “I need to interview you anyway, you being all that close to him. You tell me what you’ve heard, what you think you know, and maybe I can straighten some of it out.”
Clever. Detective Pitts really did want to tell me what he knew, at least enough of it and might tell me where I had it right or wrong. “Sure. Here goes. Everyone in the courthouse says a gun lay next to him, and his head had a big gun wound.”
“Well, Judge, I’ve got no reason to ask you about what folks say about that unless you saw it yourself.”
“No. But I sure never knew Judge Brookfeld owned a gun, any gun. He’d sure never bring it to court if he had one.”
Pitts pulled his head back a bit as if to signal he already knew a lot more. “Tell me, Judge, what makes you so sure he didn’t own a gun? Did you ever go to his home? Did he ever talk about that?”
Pitts was a good one, after all. “No, I never went to his home. He said he lived in a condo with an ocean view over in PB. He never talked about owning a gun.”
“He ever say he didn’t?”
“What? What are you saying? That was his gun?”
“Can’t say, but I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. We can trace most newer guns to the original sale, to the dealer. Let’s just say we’ve done our job, and it all checks out—the gun ownership. And we know how to check the splatter, the trajectory, the heat burns, the body position, and put all that together. If there’s any blood where the shot wouldn’t send it. You know we know how to do that, Judge. The prints on him and on the gun dealer paperwork, the FSC, comparing his real signature and the signature on the gun app, and the checking with family. We know how to do that, too.”
From presiding over a gun sale gone bad case in my first year as a judge, it all snapped in tight. FSC stood for the California Firearm Safety Certificate required for every handgun purchase. It was his gun, he bought it, even got trained in gun safety some time back, and bought the ammo and brought it in and killed himself.
I wanted to say, I’m done with you. A killer too clever for you is out there. I said, “Oh, my ever-loving God.” If I weren’t a sitting judge, I might have let out a string of curse words. “It was his gun, owned by him, bought by him. But someone could have known he kept it and used it on him?”
Pitts shrugged in a way that said, in theory maybe, but not in reality, not possible. “Judge, I can’t say, but I can say you have a great reputation.” He paused at his own BS ladled my way. “Some of the assistant DAs still talk about your first cases down in the criminal wing, all deserved. One more thing, Judge.”
“Sure, go ahead. I’ve got nothing more.”
“We know how to check the whole scene—for a struggle, for strange prints, for any knickknack out of place, for footprints on the rug. We did that, too. Your PJ McGee has been all over us to do this right. The Judicial Council, too.”
“What about killers Judge Brookfeld sentenced, their lawyers, their families?”
“Sure, they had motive, but not . . . opportunity.”
I mouthed opportunity with him. “But anyone with a California Bar card goes through the no-metal-detector entryway, and up they come to the floor, find one open door into one courtroom or to the employee area, and bingo, right to his chambers.”
“No disrespect, Judge, but we follow the evidence. It’s about as open and shut as it can get. Besides, we know how to call all the lawyers on all his big trials of say the last five years, of all the lawyers on his capital murder cases. We know how to trace the kin of everyone he ever put away and how to check their alibis. We check for release dates of those our judges sent away for a long time and who might have just gotten out. There’s not many Judge Brookfeld put away that’s been released that we need to check on. There’s not that many he put away. The kinds of trials he presided over lasted for months. He only got a few every year. And he was no hangin’ judge. Always fair, always giving a break where a break might help. But you know all that. Judge, you know of anyone who’s got it in for him?”
I had nothing more. “No, no one.” I grasped the whole event, the entire investigation, the leads chased down, all of them pointing to one set of closing notes and conclusions in the police file. Downright happy ending—my dear Melvin Brookfeld, sitting in his chair early on that Friday morning, blew out the most precious part of him, the seat of his wonderful mind.
I stared at Pitts while he talked and saw that he believed what he said. Then, again, cops always made the best liars. “And I expect you’ve traced the telephone numbers he called in the days and weeks before, checked everyone he called around here.”
For the first time, Pitts smiled, the kind of smile that let me know he saw right through my little trap. “Let’s say it’s easy for us to get his phone records for whoever he called—both around here and any friends or family back East. He was back East just before.”
Only one more card to play, one fact to challenge all the others. “Detective, none of the staff, bailiffs, heard anything? I’m not a gun person, but a pistol with that kind of wallop makes a big noise. Someone had to hear it, run up there and see something way before Friday morning.”
“Yea, we’ve been down there a time or two. You know, people hear gunshots all the time and pass them off as a car backfire, as kids with firecrackers, as crack whores squabbling, and the squabbling gets out of hand and them shooting at each other. Someone probably did hear it, but figured it came from somewhere else. Or someone got a firecracker into one of the holding cells next door. Bad things go down not far from where you preside, Your Honor.”
Nothing more came to me, to say, to ask—or maybe one thing.
“Detective, any gun dealer will have great security cameras. I suppose you matched the digital images, the date of gun purchase by our good judge.”
For the first time, Pitts hesitated in a way that told me he might have missed something. His eyes flickered. He looked away for an instant. “Ah, let’s just say for now we know how to do that, too.”
I bet you do, but did you, you all-knowing jerk? You didn’t check the cameras at the gunshop, did you? “Detective, I’m feeling a need to reach out, to let them know someone cares, to hug someone. Can you get me contact info for the family?”
Pitts took a last sip out of his glass but got only ice. As he chewed that, he said, “If it’s okay with them, it’s okay with me. I’ll email you or call. Sorry, got to go, but if you think of anything, by all means let me know. Damn shame—and I wish it were otherwise. Look for our report. Won’t be too long. Good meeting you, Your Honor.”
He got up, shook my hand, dropped two singles on the little plastic table, and did not wait for me to leave with him.
I sat until a waiter took the money, the glass, the can, and asked if I wanted anything, then slowly made my way to my Camry.
Images of Melvin streamed in, of earlier times.
5
When I returned to work after the twins were born, Melvin helped me lift some boxes of filings in “heavy” cases. We worked with sometimes massive paper filings in our cases back then, some so massive they arrived in boxes and were brought to us on dollies or wheeled file tables. Our court’s conversion to electronic briefs and other filings came later.
He lifted those boxes like a much younger man, more agile and trim than his age, though I never checked how old he was. When I finished putting the boxes where I wanted them, I had said, “Wow, this is hard.”
He looked at me, frowning with a tilt of the head.
I laughed. “No, not moving these files around. Giving birth and nursing them and then having to leave them, even for a few hours. I’ve left the better part of me back home. Their precious lives have just begun, and I must be there for them, for their every breath. Judges are not supposed to cry, but Mel, I’ve been tearing-up since I left them this morning.”
I sensed he wanted to come closer, but workplace rectitude stopped him, allowed him to just look at me, my eyes, my nearly flat belly, my heavy breasts that my blouse could not hide. “The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men—from mothers most of all, who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.”
“I bet Oliver Jr. said that.”
“Yes, he did.”
I set a box of papers on an open corner of my desk and just looked at him, at what he had just said about women and their place.
He talked on. “At bottom what we do—set the rules, tell the police to lock him up, tell the marshal to collect the debt—we do that for all mothers and their babies out there, so they may sing their little ones to sleep and not concern themselves about strange noises outside the window. You know, Judge Angela, new mother of twins, there are times I wish I were young again. Today, looking at you and at all you and your little ones have in front of you, is one of those days. But . . . then Oliver reminds me, to be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old. I shall carry on cheerfully, most especially with people such as you for company.”
Chapter Eleven
Frank, May 1970
F
reshman year turned out better than I’d expected—by a mile. I’d competed against the smart, loud kids up from the Big Apple, kids from Exeter and Andover, the best junior hockey players, and I beat them more often than they beat me—nothing lower than a B+ in the classroom, most valuable freshman hockey player. Now, I had a summer job as a crew boss in fruit orchards a short ride north of campus on the number eleven bus. On top of that, no one had come around asking me about Buford, not campus security, not the local cops, no townie friend of that asshole. Bekkah never mentioned him. She would have if Buford hadn’t left Sarah alone. And Sarah healed up really well.
“Then when will we see you again?” Father said in our weekly call.
“I don’t know. You know how it is with crops and farm hands. I might get some time off after Labor Day, might not. And classes start right up. Might keep working and making money until all the crops are in and hockey starts up.”
“Your little sister misses you, and I could use your help. Times are tight around here.”
“Father, I could send a little something home until school starts up again. My bunk is free, and they feed us well at the worker mess, and I’ll get jobs fixing sheds and barns and other stuff.”
“No, that’s okay, son. We’ll manage. Hilde works a part time job in town now. That helps. Maybe we can come and visit you after all my crops are in—if the prices don’t drop more.”
“That would be great, great to see you and Biddie. You’ll be amazed at this place.”
5
The Sunday after I cleared out of my dorm, Rebekkah’s mother and father came to pick her up in their green Buick Skylark station wagon. Rebekkah had asked me to help carry her stuff. And she had a lot of stuff: boxes of clothes, books, and class notes, big speakers and her Grundig radio, shoes and suitcases filled with girlie things. All my dorm stuff fit into one duffle bag after I turned in my used books.
I saw right away that Rebekkah’s parents were not the type to lug heavy stuff down three flights of stairs and across a stretch of grass to the car, the skin on their arms too sagging, their waists too round and soft.
Rebekkah had not asked me to sit with her at any of the graduation ceremonies, and that told me I’d never see her again after this day. I hoped my roommate, Hubie, had it right. “Women are like buses. Miss the one you want, and another one will be along in ten minutes.” But on this day, I wasn’t sure the next bus would be as good or as soul-satisfying.
“Mom, Dad, this is one of my friends, Frank Maier. He offered to help load me up.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Rebekkah’s mother. Then, “You must be the one who called last winter. I remember now.” Her father blew out the smoke from the last puff on his cigarette stub.
I had called. A maid must have answered, but I didn’t have a number where I could get calls coming in.
“Are you going home soon, too?” said the mother. Most of the underclass men and women had cleared out the week before. The graduates left last.
“No, ma’am, staying round here and working over the summer.”
“Oh, you live far away?”
“Not sure if it’s that far, ma’am. Wisconsin.”
“Of course. I should have known by your accent.”
Until that moment, I did not think I had an accent. The kids from the City and Rebekkah’s parents had accents.
“You got a job on campus for the summer?”
“No, ma’am, but not far from here.”
After I stuffed the last large box in back, Rebekkah walked away from the car and the sorority house. She motioned for me to follow. Around the corner of the sorority house where no one near her parents’ car could see us, Rebekkah took my arm and pulled herself into me. She took my head—sweaty and dust-streaked—into her hands and kissed me, softly and long.
“Thanks for a great senior year. Call me some time when you get down to the City. You’re a great guy. I’ll remember you for a long time, the fun we had, what you did for me, for taking care of Sarah.”
I searched Rebekkah’s eyes. “I didn’t do anything. Our trainer took care of her, got her to the right people to fix that arm and keep quiet about it.”
“Oh, Frank, you’re so, so young . . .” She said it like a teacher about to reveal the answer to a tough problem. “We women have a way of knowing things men don’t.”
“Okay, and what does that mean?”
“It means you are easy to figure out.” She kissed me again and made me wait. “Our whole sorority watched for Buford, asked our townie friends about him, after what he did to Sarah. It got back to us how badly beat up he was, how he couldn’t work for months, his hand in casts after more than one operation.”
“You never told me about his hand and all. Hope Sarah did that to him.” Damn. I hadn’t said that right. I had a hard time faking surprise, faking anything.
Rebekkah put a finger on my lips. “It’s okay, what you did. Buford’s dad made the police come around and ask a lot of questions. Luckily, by then Sarah’s face looked almost normal, and the cops seemed to accept that she fell on ice and broke her arm. All of us kept our story straight. But . . . it got out what someone had done to that scumbag. He couldn’t hide his smashed hand. Strangest robbery when nothing is missing, just some guy about as big as you in a ski mask, a guy who told that asshole to stay away from Sarah.”
“Wow. You’re not thinking I did anything like that?”
“Frank, only one person in the whole world fits the description, has the chutzpah, is enough of a mensch, to have done that. The police said whoever did it might not be from around here, that he talked like someone from not around here, talked like someone from maybe Chicago.”
The thrill of it, of her knowing, all of them knowing what I had done brought up goose bumps. No tentacle of guilt on this one, just feeling good about it all over again. I crossed my hands on my grubby white T-shirt. “Lots of guys could have done that to an asshole like him.”
“Trouble is, Bubele, the only guy fitting the description in the whole world who also knew what he had done to Sarah, who would warn him to stay away from Sarah is . . . you.”
“What? What are you talking . . .?” I couldn’t finish, didn’t want to finish. It was right that they knew it all turned out as it should have. It was better they knew I had done it, better than no one ever knowing and wanting to know.
Rebekkah took my hands in hers and kissed them. “Mom and Dad will be looking for me.”
As we walked back around to the front of the sorority house and car, Rebekkah moved away, strode ahead of me. Today she wore jeans that fit her just right and sandals with low heels. I couldn’t not see the swivel in her walk, athletic and easy but all female. It made me sigh. She waved and yelled, “Mom, Dad, we were looking for you. I’m starving. Let’s get out of here and get something to eat on the way.”
She looked back at me. “Want to come—your favorite pastrami place? They won’t mind—just no touching, no kissing in front of them. I couldn’t stand the questions all the way home.”
“Nah, you go on.”
Her parents were close now, staring, quiet, brooding as their senses might be telling them about things their daughter had not told them. I reached out my hand to Rebekkah. “Well, good luck. Good to know you.”
She brushed her fingers up over her forehead through her long black hair, as she had done so often when we were alone. I had loved her doing that, had told her so. “Yeah, and thanks for helping. You’re the best.” She turned to her parents. “Mom, can I sit up front so I can direct Daddy to the deli for this one last time?” Then, “Frank, you sure you don’t want to come?”
“Sure. You go,” then to her parents, “Nice to meet you.”
Her father moved over to me, reached out his right hand balled up in a fist. “Thanks for helping our Bekkah, son.”
I sensed it might be a dollar bill, maybe a Lincoln. “Happy to. You have a cool daughter.” I ignored the older man’s clenched hand.
“Well then, good luck to you.” He turned away.
Rebekkah looked down at her feet. I caught a new feeling in how she didn’t move, didn’t want to move, wanted to say, then started to say something but caught herself—regret, wishing things were different in our lives, in hers, wishing we might meet again. “So long then, Frank.”
I watched them drive into the bright spring day until the Buick turned the corner and its engine noise faded. Another family that was not mine.
Over the summer, I didn’t try to contact her, too awkward to inject any of the truth, too complicated and wrong. I, three years behind her in college, almost four years younger in age, as un-Jewish as they come, had mated with her every chance we got. But our talk, what there was of it, evaded how it would end, knowing it would end, and knowing the ending could be hard on one or both of us. I didn’t think of her as my first love, maybe my first woman friend and lust reliever rolled into one. I had no idea what love meant, what it felt like or was supposed to feel like. No angel choirs sang when I thought of her, no heart broke when she was far away. But I knew she had made me better, and I tried harder in all ways. She brought me peace whenever I was with her, and she would have for the rest of my days if we had stayed together.
