“I’ve drunk so much coffee I’m humming.”
Courtney accompanied me to my car, double-parked outside the Dunkin’ Donuts shop on Merrimack. She shivered and drew up the collar of her jacket. “I kept watching the office,” she said, “waiting for Mr. Meecham to go home. I could see the windows from that corner booth.”
Our offices across the square were dark now except for reflected moonlight.
We took the back stairs up to the third floor. She unlocked Meecham’s suite and ushered me in. We went into his law library, and she turned on a table lamp. “Judge Travani called, and Mr. Meecham called him back. Afterward, he spent time in here, but he wasn’t studying. He was brooding about something. I heard him pacing. I stayed for a while, in case he needed me, and I had some typing to get caught up on, but finally he told me I should go home.”
“How did he seem?”
“Preoccupied for sure. If I had to guess? Depressed.”
The lamp had a deep-green glass shade, and it cast a glow on the rich mahogany of the table. A legal pad lay there. On it were some doodles and scribbled notes and a phone number. One of the drawings was a gallows.
I wondered if he liked to play Hangman or if it meant something else. “Did he make any calls after he talked with the judge?” I asked.
“Not while I was here.”
I pressed redial on his phone, and it rang through. A machine answered, and a voice that I knew from only a brief encounter identified the line as the courthouse office of Carly Ouellette. I hung up.
Courtney turned off the lights and locked up, and we went back down the corridor to my office. I put on my desk lamp. She took the client chair, and I sat at my desk. I brought out the bottle of Wild Turkey and held it up inquiringly. “I shouldn’t,” she said. “But maybe it’ll settle the coffee. With a little water, please.”
I poured two, adding water from a carafe. I drank mine off. She took hers in a more refined fashion, but she didn’t grimace.
“Did you learn anything just now?” she asked.
“From the bourbon?”
She smiled. “From your phone call.”
I scootched my chair in closer to the desk. “Fred apparently called Judge Travani’s office assistant.”
“That Ouellette person?”
“Uh-huh—who also happens to be the person who witnessed Flora Nuñez’s signature on her request for a restraining order. And whenever I’ve tried to talk to her, she runs away. Apparently she’s a one-woman flying wedge around the judge. All of which may mean nothing at all.”
Courtney drew a pad from her purse and clicked her pen. “On the other hand?”
“I don’t think you can bill Fred for any of this,” I said.
“I haven’t felt this wired since my last No-Doz binge, cramming for finals. Talk.”
“Okay, question number one. If Pepper isn’t guilty, why doesn’t he squawk?”
“An innocent person usually protests his innocence loudly,” she agreed.
“That’s the puzzler, isn’t it? But there might be an explanation.”
I reminded her of Pepper’s childhood as an orphan and foster child, always looking for a family. I told her about the Asbury Park pennant.
“And now, with the carnival, it’s like he’s been on a trial basis
again,” Courtney said, a little breathlessly, connecting dots that I thought only I saw. “He didn’t want to screw up. So now he doesn’t know what to do.” She leaned closer, her smooth brow crinkling, and I had an image of her as she must’ve been in school, sitting in the front row, interested and eager and as smart as they come. “He’s learned not to speak up because it’s always tended to go bad for him. Right from childhood.”
“It adds up. Behavioral patterns run deep. We keep making the same mistakes, ’round and around. Sometimes therapy, or a life-changing event, can help us see, but it’s tough. And it isn’t something a defense attorney could take to court with much hope of selling it.”
“I know Mr. Meecham was struggling with that.” Courtney’s blue eyes clouded. “Do … do you think Troy Pepper killed that Flora Nuñez?”
I hesitated, then said, “Do you want to go further with this?”
Her turn for hesitation; then, “Yes.”
“Hold on to that question for a bit. We’ll get there.” I gestured with the bottle. She shook her head. I poured mine again.
“Do you drink a lot when you’re working on a case?”
“What’s a lot?” I didn’t go into my woes. “All right—your question. I’ve grappled with that day and night since Monday morning, and I finally have my answer. I haven’t seen anything that proves it one way or the other, so it gets down to what I understand about people. That past experiences can help us predict what we might do. Pepper is an extremely sensitive person—a loner who nevertheless is looking for connection.”
“But even a sensitive person can do something really bad,” Courtney said.
“I know—and therein lies the key. He’s taciturn to a fault. He has a hard time even going out with his fellow workers for a beer. But if he’d done something like what he’s accused of, he’d have felt a strong need to talk about it, because it would bother him so much. A psychopath or a hardened criminal can deal—for different reasons—but they won’t crack. He would. So he’d have talked with somebody. Fred, Pop Sonders, the cops. Even me. But he hasn’t. So that’s your answer. That’s why I don’t believe he did it.”
“But rather than protest that he’s innocent,” Courtney said, “he went even deeper inside … and he’s trapped there.”
“I think so. But try to prove it. It’s a tall order.”
“Was Fred right to drop this one?”
I was slow to answer. “I’m not judging Fred. I’m sure he’s got reasons, good ones. But I don’t.”
“You’re staying on, then.”
Through the window, riding above the illuminated sign for the Sun building across the square, was the moon, small now and bleached white as a bone. “For now,” I said.
She nodded.
“And for now we’re done,” I said. “You, girl, did good. Very good. But you need to be on your merry way and get some rest.”
“I think I’ll sleep fine.” She capped her pen and put her notes away. She reached for the phone. “I’ll call for a cab.”
“I’m going that way. Let me just make one more call.”
Her apartment was in the stretch of artists’ lofts on the lower end of Middle Street, in the block beyond Palmer. As I double-parked in front of the building that she indicated, a woman came to a tall third-floor window and looked down. Beyond the glass, she appeared to be some years older than Courtney, dark hair to her shoulders and wearing a green robe. She saw Courtney and me get out of the car and waved vaguely in our direction, probably full of questions, and probably relieved. I escorted Courtney inside the locking outer door and said good night. As I turned to go out, she said, “You ought to go home and get some sleep.”
“Yeah.”
“Right. So what will you do?”
I gave it a quick smile.
“Ask a stupid question.” She chewed her lip. “When I did my honors thesis on the Bread and Roses labor movement, I realized that a lot of people, right here in this city, women and men, did a lot of brave things … stood up for things.”
“Don’t be too quick to put me in their league. I just know myself, Courtney. If I roll over once, it’s easier the next time.”
“Suppose there isn’t a next time? Maybe you need to weigh that in, too.”
“There’s always a next time. And knowing what you did—or didn’t do—it sticks with you, and you feel dirty. I’m dirty enough as it is.” She was studying me intently. I wasn’t sure what her expression meant, and I wasn’t going to try to find out. If she was looking for a mentor or a philosophy course, she’d do better back at Mount Holyoke. I gave her a gentle push toward the elevator. Then I drove off, my tires buzzing on the cobblestones, and headed toward where the late-night action was.