JULIA RETURNED TO the office facing a string of innocuous voice mails that nonetheless demanded attention, and a full afternoon court schedule.
She barely made it to Calvin’s after-school program by the six PM pickup deadline, and when she got home, Calvin needed dinner and the puppy demanded kibble in addition to whatever household item he’d managed to destroy that day.
Dinner, of course, meant dishes to be washed; then she had to walk the dog, who viewed his leash as a tug-of-war toy, turning the walk into more of a prolonged drag, which while it delighted Calvin added that many more minutes to an overlong day that still included a bath and bedtime story for Calvin.
Julia couldn’t do the research she’d postponed all day until she’d fallen fully clothed into bed, Jake snoring lightly beside her in violation of her futile no-dogs-on-the-furniture rule.
She didn’t have the energy to get out her laptop or unearth her tablet from whatever box it had ended up in during the move. Instead she plugged her phone into its charger and tapped her way to the legislature’s website, squinting at the dense type on the tiny screen until she found the bills Leslie Harper had been sponsoring before death cut her efforts short. Most of them seemed fairly straightforward for a progressive legislator who knew just how far she could push things in an otherwise conservative state.
Hence a bill to allow the state’s popular brewpubs, an outsize number of them located in Duck Creek, to stay open later at night. A bill to create all-day kindergarten. (Julia hoped that one would pass. She paid an obscene amount of money for the afternoon day-care session Calvin attended at the school.)
A handful of proposals that began Generally revise … followed by some obscure law that needed updating to reflect, say, the fact that people had been driving automobiles for well over a century. Several of Harper’s bills, though, had to do with some aspect of the criminal justice system: proposals to compensate wrongfully convicted people for the time they’d languished in prison; one to eliminate the death penalty (which had even less hope of passing than a bill to impose a sales tax); one to eliminate the onerous fees applied to those who found themselves in the court system, fees that mounted extraordinarily quickly and that often saw the Ray Belmars of the world land back in jail, not because they’d committed a new crime but because they hadn’t paid their court costs.
Julia hated the fees but knew the good citizens of their state would hate the tax increase necessary to make up the difference even more. Even if Harper had lived, that bill wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Julia lay the phone aside, turned off her bedside light, and rolled over, her tumble toward sleep bumping up against a damnable detail. Someone—who?—had mentioned Harper being on a study committee, one of the groups put together by the legislature to delve into pressing issues and fashion bills to address them. She groaned, knowing she’d never sleep with that final question hovering like a mosquito whining at her ear.
She reached again for the phone, blinked a few times to focus, and went back to the legislature’s site. It took a while—the legislature hadn’t seen fit to spend money making its site user-friendly—but she finally found it. The committee was looking into establishing an oversight board for the state’s sheriff’s departments, often jealously guarded fiefdoms of patronage, especially in its rural reaches. Until recently, their state hadn’t even required sheriffs and deputies to graduate from the state police academy. Maybe Harper had pissed off some small-town sheriff who’d been running some penny-ante protection racket. She’d ask Wayne in the morning.
Which was the last thought Julia had before falling asleep with the phone on her chest and the puppy snuggled tight beneath her chin.
It seemed as though Wayne might prove useless once again.
“Anybody would be a fool to object to a commission like that,” he said. “Just makes it seem like you’ve got something to hide.”
She’d found him at the coffee stand, where he’d taken one look at the same sight she’d confronted in the mirror that morning—the crepey flesh beneath her eyes, the blotchy skin, and grooves from mouth to chin—and offered her the cup in his hand, shaking his head and backing away when she refused.
“They got my order wrong,” he said. “They gave it to me black. If you don’t drink it, I’m just going to toss it.”
Julia didn’t believe his cockamamy story for a minute but took the coffee anyway, downing it in throat-searing gulps as Wayne talked on.
“Any objection is just as stupid as all the fuss about body cams. People should be happy to have proof they didn’t screw up. Same with this study commission. If your department’s squeaky-clean, then let ’em study all they want.”
Julia tilted her cup, ascertaining that it was truly empty. “But you and I both know some sketchy stuff goes on out in those rural counties. They’ve got such a hard time finding people to work in the hinterlands for crap pay that they’ll take anybody they can get.”
He offered a bland smile. “So maybe an oversight board is a good idea. They’ll ferret that stuff out and we’ll all be the better for it. Glad I work here. Our department’s big enough and people are paid well enough that we don’t have to worry about it. Although, come to think of it …”
He stopped.
Julia had started for the coffee cart for a second cup. She turned back. “Come to think of it, what?”
“Somebody in our department did raise a stink about it. The commission, I mean. But it was probably just on principle. That whole libertarian thing. You know how it is. Did everything work out with the locksmith?”
She gave him a thumbs-up. “Perfect. Nice guy. But Wayne, who?”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. You know how people are. Have a good day, Julia. And get some sleep tonight. Hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you look like hell.”
“Wayne.” She had to jog to catch up with his long, loping stride. “Who?”
He stopped at the door of the sheriff’s department. “I didn’t want to say. I know you think I’m always bad-mouthing her. But I guess this isn’t really running her down. Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion, right?”
Oh. Cheryl Hayes again.
But when she opened her mouth, he drew his finger across her lips, gently closing them.
“Remember,” he said. “I never told you anything.”
“Whole lotta not-talkin’ going on,” she muttered to his retreating back.
Ray wouldn’t talk. Cheryl Hayes wouldn’t either. Mack Coates didn’t want her to talk. Nor did her anonymous caller. The one person who did want to talk with her—Marie the intern, who never quite managed to chase the pleading from her eyes, despite the aloof expression she affected—Julia wanted as little to do with as possible. And she couldn’t talk to the two people whose company she most craved, Dom and Claudette.
“Fuck it,” she said.
She didn’t have the nerve to contact Dom—just thinking about him put her right back in that moment, the sudden splash of light across the bed, Dom still moving beneath her, the glimpse of Elena’s horrified face over her shoulder. Why didn’t brains come with an erase switch?
But Claudette was a different story.
She headed outside, walking the two blocks to the county prosecutor’s office, which for some reason rated its own separate building, fodder for endless snark among the public defenders, who already resented the fact that they were paid less than the prosecutors.
She realized when she pushed through the door that she’d never been to Claudette’s new digs; had never been there at all, in fact, even during all the years when Dom’s ex was the county prosecutor. So her gasp of appreciation and envy was genuine when a receptionist ushered her into Claudette’s lair.
Julia took in the desk sized to impress, the two comfortable chairs—and a sofa!—along with an entire wall of shelves and another of wooden file cabinets topped with a collection of thriving houseplants that would have shriveled for lack of light in the public defenders’ office. Pavarotti, Claudette’s canary, warbled a greeting from a new, larger cage that swung from the ceiling.
She turned an appreciative circle, arms flung wide. “La-di-freaking-da. How do you even get any work done here? I’d be too busy staring at all the goodies to file a single affidavit.”
Claudette leaned back, put her feet up on the desk, and gestured Julia toward one of the chairs.
“I admit to enjoying it. A lot.”
Julia stroked the chair’s polished arm. “I would too.”
“You could.” Claudette arched an eyebrow. “If you ever wanted to come over to the dark side, I’d put you at the top of the list.”
Julia couldn’t deny she’d thought about it. An extra ten grand a year, for starters, just enough to edge her into a category where she wouldn’t have had to take a rental deal involving a dog. And a title that people liked—crime fighter!—rather than one that involved sticking up for the criminals. The alleged criminals, she reminded herself.
She imagined herself on the other side of the courtroom, haranguing some poor sap like Ray, always in trouble but never doing real harm to anyone but himself. Trying to persuade a judge to slap him with a bail he’d never manage, leaving him in jail, every day there a day further away from assuming a job, responsibilities, an education, a family. The fact that the odds were against someone like Ray ever doing any of those things anyway was beside the point. At least, out in the world, he’d have a fighting chance.
“Not yet,” she said. “But ask me after I’m done with this case.”
Claudette opened Pavarotti’s cage and offered a finger. He hopped onto it and she withdrew her hand, sitting very still as he clambered up her arm and onto her shoulder, where he proceeded to nibble on an earring.
“You know we can’t talk about the case. Unless you’re here about a plea agreement.”
You had to give Claudette credit. She never stopped pushing, which probably explained her career trajectory.
“Right. But I’m not. I’m here about Leslie Harper. You two were tight, right?”
Claudette’s feet hit the floor with a thump. Pavarotti hunched and tucked his head under a wing.
“It wasn’t just work. We were in a book group together.” Her voice thickened. “We always looked forward to meeting at her house. That woman could cook like nobody’s business. The entire kitchen island would be covered with cookies, pastries, you name it.”
“Know anything about her work at the Capitol?”
Claudette’s fond smile coexisted with the tears in her eyes. “She was fierce. You know, criminal justice reform is nobody’s idea of popular. But she went after it anyway, even though her bills got shot down year after year. But every so often she’d get something through, maybe just an amendment to another bill. ‘It’s a long game,’ she’d say, and go right back to drafting more bills destined to die in committee.”
Pavarotti peeked out from beneath his wing, assessed the change in her mood, and rubbed his head against her cheek. Claudette touched a finger to the corner of her eye. “I hate when we lose our warriors.”
A mantel clock—yes, Claudette had a mantel, over a damn fireplace—chimed softly. Julia needed to get back to her own office.
“Know anything about the study commission she was on? The one about an oversight agency for the sheriff’s departments?”
Claudette gently removed Pavarotti from her shoulder and returned him to his cage. “Not much,” she said with her back to Julia. “I guess there were some allegations about our department. But they must not have come to anything, or I’d have heard about it.”
“That makes sense.” Julia stood. “I’m going back to real work in a real office. You have fun here in your luxury suite.”
Julia got out of the office as fast as she could, holding her face very still, afraid that Claudette would divine she’d let something slip.
Wayne had expressed relief that the Peak County Sheriff’s Office was large enough, its deputies well-enough paid, that it didn’t have to worry about the sort of petty corruption that plagued other offices around the state.
But he’d told her that Cheryl Hayes had balked at the idea of oversight. And Claudette had just revealed that whatever problem had snagged the legislature’s attention concerned the Peak County department.
Now the person who’d been responsible for gearing up a mechanism to look into it was dead.