The man outside Maureen Patterson's house turned out to be a stoner who had pulled into her neighborhood to sleep it off, rather than risk getting arrested for driving under the influence, or whatever they were calling it now that Colorado had legalized pot. It was ironic that, as soon as the police made contact with the guy, they would have realized he was seriously impaired and arrested him based upon his own admission that he'd been driving. Still, it had one positive outcome. It frightened Brent's mother—and Brent—enough to persuade him to come clean.
He showed up about twenty minutes late, out of breath, decked out in a Rockies cap with the brim pulled down, dark glasses, a faded t-shirt and blue jean shorts. I'd frankly written him off, figuring he'd changed his mind and wasn't going to show up. But here he was. This time, he didn't pause to stare out the windows or engage in any idle chat. He plopped down into one of the black leather chairs, removing the hat and glasses.
He said, "Where do you want me to start?"
"How you found out about the judge taking bribes."
He glanced up sharply. "You know about that?"
"I do. But I need to hear it from you."
"My Aunt Nora usually came over to our house two or three times a week. She and my mom would sit and talk at the dining room table. One night, maybe a year ago, my aunt was really freaked out about something. I hung out in the living room and listened. She said she was pretty sure her judge—that's what she called him, her judge—was taking money from some of the lawyers. A briefcase started showing up in his office. Like my mom told you, she figured out that whenever someone was coming to drop off the money, he'd leave his back door unlocked. Sometimes, it would show up when he was in court or getting lunch. But it was always the same briefcase."
"How did she know it was more than one lawyer?"
"There was a pattern. There were a few lawyers who seemed to have a lot of cases in front of this judge. He'd figured out some way of assigning cases to himself. The briefcase showed up a week or two before the trial and then it vanished again. And the lawyer always seemed to win. She said they weren't even good lawyers. They just kept winning. Once in a while, she would see one of them hanging around with the judge after the trial was over."
"Did she identify any of the lawyers?"
"Naw, she was pretty sure one person was coordinating everything, but she never saw who it was. She was worried about it and was trying to figure out what to do."
"What did she do?"
"As far as I know, nothing. She just kept quiet about it."
"What else did you find out from her?"
"That's it. Nothing else. Oh, except that when the judge died, she was worried someone would find the briefcase, so she grabbed it and stuck it in back of a closet in her office. My mom told you about that."
"She did. Anything else?"
"No, that's everything I know about what happened to Aunt Nora."
"But that's not all you know about this matter, is it?"
He lowered his head. "No."
"What did you do, Brent?"
"It's not so much what I did. Well, sort of, it is. I blabbed it to my friend."
"What friend?"
"David Salazar."
"And?" I prompted.
"He did something really stupid. He—Okay, I need to go back a ways. David had a really tough life. His dad walked away from the family the day after David's fourth birthday. His mom was a meth addict and, basically, a lost cause. He was still a kid when she overdosed and they found her frozen to death downtown after a snowstorm. After that, he was basically on his own. You've got to understand, he wasn't a bad guy. He just—"
"Brent, what did he do?"
"He called the judge. David got online and somehow found the guy's home number. He said he had proof the judge was taking bribes. He demanded $5,000 to keep his mouth shut."
"Did he really have proof?"
"Naw, he was just blowing smoke. But he made it sound like it was real."
"How did the judge respond?"
"He denied it. But David kept pushing and the judge said, okay, he'd pay the money."
"How did that turn out?" I said. I already suspected the answer. It hadn't escaped me that he was referring to his friend in the past tense.
"Bad. The judge said he couldn't show up himself, but he'd send someone. They set it up to meet the next night at some bar. David wouldn't tell me where. The other guy was supposed to leave the briefcase at a certain spot and go into the men's room for ten minutes. David would grab the briefcase and then leave. He figured he'd be safe that way."
"What went wrong?"
"I'm not sure. He made some comment about planning to wait outside and follow the guy, so he could find out who he was dealing with. I told him that sounded pretty dangerous, but David wouldn't listen. Somehow it backfired on him. I guess now I know why."
"When was the last time you heard from him?"
"That morning. He was all jazzed up about what he was doing. He really needed the money. He was staying with some mutual friends. A couple days later, I hadn't heard from him, so I dropped by just to see him. They said he never came home that night."
"Did you report it to the police?"
"Are you kidding? How could I do that? Go tell the cops my friend went to pick up the money he was squeezing from a judge and he never came home? If David was okay, I'd just be getting him in trouble. And, either way, it would get me in trouble. I started looking around online. They found a dead body the morning after he went to get the money. From the way they described it, I figured it was David."
"You said you think you now know what went wrong?"
"Yeah, what you said when we were here the other day. There was that GPS thing in the briefcase. They turned it all around on him and killed him."
"Apparently so. When did all of this happen?"
"Somewhere around St. Patrick's Day."
"What else do you know about this?"
"Nothing. I swear. That's all."
"No, it isn't," I said in a stern voice. "Tell me what you did."
"What I did? Nothing. I swear."
"Brent, the briefcase was in the judge's office the day he died. There was money inside. That means they had retrieved it from your friend, David. It also means they were still using it to transport money. Your aunt said the briefcase would show up a week or two before the trial and then disappear. But, during this trial, it was still sitting in his office, full of money."
He looked like he was going to cry. "So?"
"The ten thousand dollars was outgoing. Someone else was demanding money, presumably to keep quiet about your friend's murder. The judge knew what happened to David and didn't want to be responsible for another death. Which is what would have happened to you if the judge hadn't killed himself. So I'll ask you again. What did you do, Brent?"
His voice was barely audible. "I called the judge. You've got to promise me you won't tell my Mom about this. What I did probably got my aunt killed."
"I can't make any promises. What happened, Brent?"
"When David said he had the judge's phone number, I didn't believe him. He told me what it was, just to prove he was telling the truth. And so I'd have it, in case something went wrong. I called the judge. I told him I knew he and his crew had killed someone to keep him quiet. I didn't say David's name or that he was my friend. That might have given me away. I said the price was now ten thousand dollars."
"What did the judge say?"
"He claimed he didn't know what I was talking about. I said he was a liar and I wanted the money."
"Why on earth would you do that?"
"Because these bastards killed my friend. They needed to pay."
I had a few thoughts about that, but I kept them to myself. "What happened next?"
"He asked for my phone number. He said he'd call me back."
I tried not to gawk. "You gave him your phone number?"
"Jeeze, I'm not an idiot, Mr. Larsen. I'd called him from a hotel, on the phone in the lobby. I told him I'd call him back in an hour. He said, no, he wouldn't be home until later and I needed to call at exactly six."
"Did you call him back?"
"No. By then, I knew he was dead. From Aunt Nora. She was a basket case. She couldn't believe he would kill himself." He leaned back in the chair. "Am I in trouble, Mr. Larsen?"
"Possibly. Criminal extortion is a felony. The reality, however, is that the person you threatened is dead. There are no witnesses who can testify about what you did. I'd say your greater peril is from whoever murdered your aunt. They know there's someone out there who knows about the bribery scheme and about your friend's murder. If they hit upon the notion that your aunt took anyone into her confidence—your mother, for example—then she could be in grave danger."
"Wow, I really screwed this up, didn't I?"
"Yes, you did. The question is, what do we do about it?"
"How about this: I could offer myself as bait. I could contact them and say—"
"How would you do that?" I said. "The only contact number you had was the judge's home phone number. He isn't going to be answering any more telephones. We have no idea who else to contact." I leaned forward and aimed a cold stare at him. "Unless you know something you haven't told me."
"No, Mr. Larsen. I don't. I've told you everything. I swear. What do I do? How do I fix this?"
"You don't. Let me handle this. Promise me you won't do a single thing. Not one damn thing. Understood?"
He nodded solemnly. "Understood."
With that, I escorted him down the hall to the reception area.
Now that I had a mass of new information, the next step was to figure out what to do with it. I'd already known that Gumauer wasn't running the bribery operation. That role belonged to someone else. Someone who had murdered Gumauer's clerk and presumably tried to dispose of me the same way. It was virtually certain that he'd also killed David Salazar.
But none of this told me who he was.
Or how to expose him.
I debated calling McKeever, but decided to keep it in-house for the moment. I still wasn't a hundred per cent sure of him. When I tried to call Jana, it went to voice mail. I left a message, "I can narrow your search for dead bodies considerably. We're looking for a man in his early twenties who was killed around St. Patrick's Day. His name was David Salazar. Please let me know if that matches anything on your list."
It occurred to me there was one other call I could safely make. He answered the same way he always did. "Gross here." He added, "What can I do for you, my friend?"
"What do you know about a body that was found behind a bar in mid-March?"
I could almost hear him snap to attention. "A corpse? You got something for me?"
"I might."
"Where was it found?"
"I don't know. Just that it was a young man behind a bar."
"What other information can you give me?"
"For the moment, none. When the time comes, everything I can."
"Oh, I love it when you say things like that. This year, Christmas may come in July. Or for me, Chanukah."
"Only if you can help me figure this thing out."
"I'll have to get back to you. Let me do some poking around."
"Just be careful where you go poking, Hal. This one could blow up in someone's face."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. Don't ask anyone you're not a hundred per cent sure of."
"This has something to do with Gumauer, doesn't it?"
"No comment. Go do your poking around."
Just before lunchtime, Jim Park called. "Hey, Mr. Larsen, just checking in. Is anything going on?"
"That would be an understatement. I think we have enough evidence to move forward."
"Hot damn! What's the next step?"
"I'm going to send a demand letter to Vance Cunningham."
"Yeah? What are you gonna tell him?"
"I plan to provide him with a draft of the complaint that we're going to file."
"I'm not second-guessing you, but why give him a heads up?"
"To give him a chance to work this out without making us move forward with the lawsuit. He knows that Judge Gumauer is dead. If we're right, he also knows he paid off the judge. That has personal implications for him. He might decide it's better to cooperate with us than to engage in a court battle, where everything is a public record."
"You think he might cave?"
"There's only one way to find out. This afternoon, I'm going to draft the letter and a proposed complaint. I'll email them to you for your review."
"Thank you. I'm jazzed! Maybe there's some justice, after all."
After I hung up, I beeped Maurice's office. "Lunch?"
"You bet. How about Mongolian barbecue?"
"Sounds good. I'll bring you up to speed on what's been happening."
"Do I want to know?"
"I think so."
"Then let's go."
* * * *
I had just finished drafting the documents for Jim Park when Hal Gross called. He said, "I don't have much, but you're welcome to it. Hispanic male, probably in his early twenties. He was found in an alley behind a bar, just off of West Colfax. It was mid-March. He'd been shot in the back of the head, execution style, from fairly close range. No identification on the body. No one heard the shot. They're guessing the assailant used a silencer."
"What about his fingerprints? Couldn't they—"
"I assume so, but if they know who he was, they sure haven't released any details."
"Any surveillance cameras?"
He laughed. "Funny you should mention that. Someone stole the camera a couple of months earlier. That was the third time it's happened in the past two years. The owner just gave up. He didn't bother to replace it."
"So they've got nothing?"
"Evidently not. But I'm betting you have plenty. Give."
Something was stirring in the back of my mind, but it refused to step out of the shadows. "I can't, Hal. Not yet. Tell me, have you heard anything about any crooked cops? Or anyone at the DA's office?"
"No joke?"
"No joke."
"I haven't heard anything. What do you have in mind?"
"Nothing specific. It's something about Milton Gumauer. I keep getting dragged into things that relate to his death." I sidestepped what I knew would be his next question. "I can't tell you. I just know that some of the people involved seem to know a lot more than they ought to."
"You think someone's talking?"
"I know they are. It may be perfectly innocuous, but I wonder. Maybe I'm just getting paranoid."
"I doubt that. You have good instincts about that sort of thing. If you're concerned, you'd better be careful."
"Thanks. As my grandfather used to say, 'Act hastily, repent in the morgue.'"
Jana called me back, on her way to meet some of her women friends for happy hour. She said, "I got your message. That one's on the list, but there's almost nothing to go on. All they say is a man was found dead in an alley in the five hundred block on West Colfax. No cause of death. No details."
"Here's one. His name was David Salazar."
"How did you find that out?"
"It's a long story. Will you see what you can find out about him?"
"Sure. First thing tomorrow morning. Do you want me to reach out to someone at the Police Department?"
"No. I want to think about this before we do anything. For once, I think we're a step ahead of whoever's behind this."
"Whatever you say."
"Thanks. Who's your designated driver tonight?"
She giggled. "Not me."
"Well, call me if you need a ride home. Or someone to bail you out."
"Or if I get real horny."
"Yeah. Or that. If you can get past the damn security doors."
"No problem," she said brightly. "I had Scott make me an extra key."
"I'll leave the light on."
On the way home, I did some serious thinking. Jim Park had called while I was on another phone call. He told Diana he was thrilled with what I had emailed him and I should "unleash the dogs." That seemed like an apt description. As soon as Vance Cunningham saw the draft complaint that I intended to file, he would undoubtedly react. I had no doubt about that. It all but accused him of bribing a district court judge. It also meant that I had an ethical duty to report him to the disciplinary prosecutor.
But that would have to wait.
That illusive something finally popped into my consciousness.
Based upon the spreadsheet Ann had prepared, it had been clear that Cunningham and Antrim and three other lawyers were the primary beneficiaries of Milton Gumauer's largesse. One of the other names on that list, which I had only noted with passing curiosity, suddenly no longer seemed like a coincidence.
It was a long shot, but I thought I knew how information was getting into the wrong hands.
I reached for my phone and dialed McKeever's number.