Suggestion of Death Page 8

  “I thought you’d never ask her, Jim,” Pat said as Jim walked with her to the elevator. “See, she’s really pretty nice.”

  “If you’re not on the wrong side of the bench.” His anger began to dissipate, but he still wondered what the hell she had thought she was doing.

  “Now don’t be shy. Ask her everything you need to know.” Pat patted him on the arm. “Everything will be okay.”

  He mopped his forehead with his sleeve. “And if not, I suppose the bailiff will take care of me.”

  “Bitsy?”

  “Yes, big Bitsy from inside the courtroom.”

  Pat laughed. “She’s okay, too, Jim. Stop being paranoid.” She squeezed his forearm.

  Was she sending him a message? Did she leave her hand on his arm just a bit too long? Was she hinting? Or was she only seeing his article as a family project? “You going to be home later?”

  “Sure. If you have time you can come by and tell me how it went.” Something in her smile was like the Pat he used to know. “Just remember to be yourself with the judge and don’t let her intimidate you just because she could put you in jail. Don’t be afraid to get all the information you can out of her.”

  Jim watched Patty get on the elevator. He didn’t like the setup at all. Why did he have to have a private one-on-one with the judge when he was not prepared and never intended to talk to her about his article anyway? Though if she’d let him use a quote from her it wouldn’t be a bad thing.

  And her giving him a week. One week? What the hell could he do in a week? He might know about the newspaper job, but that would be it. He wouldn’t be anywhere with his article. Didn’t the judge know how long it took to get stuff published? It would take a miracle to have accomplished anything in such a short period of time.

  Jim shook off his anxiety. He needed to use the few minutes he had to plan the interview with the judge. What kind of reaction would he get out of her if he asked about Mr. Johnson’s death? What excuse would he give her for wanting to know about it? Would she let him look at the file? When did he die? He’d been alive and well thirty days ago. How would he tie the man’s death into the subject of his article? The judge had said Mr. Johnson’s children would be better off if he were dead, and now he was. What would Judge Lopez say about that?

  Chapter Eight

  Jim sat in the judge’s reception area and waited for his interview. He had introduced himself to the court coordinator, and now she had her back to him as she worked at a computer. There were few choices in reading material, Texas Monthly, Ladies Home Journal, or Parent’s Magazine. The office was mauve with gray carpet. The black and chrome furniture, obviously purchased from the low bidder, was ugly, cheap, and practical. On the walls hung framed art posters and painted country scenes. A faint aroma of flowers hung in the air. He was glad it was not the overwhelming smell of roses that big Bitsy wore.

  From where he sat, Jim could see a bit of the judge’s chambers, bookshelves filled with law books and personal photographs, and a sofa and coffee table.

  A door inside her chambers opened, and the judge called out, “I didn’t get to send anyone to jail this morning, Clarice.” Her now familiar cackle echoed through the office as she walked past the doorway and another door closed. Minutes later, a toilet flushed and the door opened. It was good to know that judges had the same bodily functions as the rest of the world.

  Clarice said, “Maybe this afternoon you can incarcerate someone, Judge,” and winked at Jim. “There’s someone here waiting to see you. Maybe he’s a candidate.”

  Jim squirmed and put down the Parent’s Magazine he hoped the judge would see him reading. The judge obviously had seen him sitting there and didn’t care. He didn’t know whether Clarice knew he was one of the men from the courtroom or not. He hadn’t explained. All he’d done was tell her he was writing an article about fathers who didn’t pay child support and that the judge had agreed to give him an interview. Clarice had pointed to a chair, told him he could wait, and that had been the gist of their communication. It had been pretty boring watching her back for the last thirty minutes.

  “Come on in, Mr. uh-ah...”

  Jim’s tongue felt thick when he said his name. “Dorman.” He grimaced as he got to his feet. She could put people in jail but couldn’t even remember their names.

  “Dorman,” she repeated. She beckoned and disappeared into the interior of her chambers.

  He nodded at Clarice who winked again and waved him toward the doorway. When Jim entered, the judge slid onto a sofa and lit a cigarette.

  “My one bad habit,” she said. “But don’t tell anybody. This building’s supposed to be smoke free.” Wrapping her long skirt around her skinny, little legs, she propped her gnarled little feet upon a coffee table and held an ashtray in her lap. Her creepy catlike eyes seemed to laugh at him. He wished he could say he was glad she relished her work.

  “Sit down.” She waved her hand across the room like the sun rising and setting in one swift motion. She seemed even smaller than she looked on the bench.

  Jim loomed over her before taking a chair opposite the sofa. He pulled out a wire bound pad and placed his briefcase on his lap. Unclipping a pen from his breast pocket, he wrote her name at the top of the page.

  “Don’t have anything to offer you. None of us are coffee lovers.” She gestured toward a white box resting on a small table. “The refrigerator is empty. Don’t even know why I keep it plugged in.”

  “That’s all right.” Jim glanced above her head, rather than stare into her face, and saw an autographed picture of the President of the United States on the wall. Had she chosen to sit under that photograph to intimidate him, so he could see how important she was? If so, it had worked. Not that he needed any more intimidation after being in the courtroom.

  “So you’re going to write an article about fathers who don’t take care of their kids.”

  Jim held back a shudder. Perspiration dripped off him like he was in a prison sweatbox. He really wished he could control that.

  “For whom?”

  “For whom?”

  “Yes, Mr. Dorman. For whom? Who is going to publish it? What’s the matter with you? I’ve never met a reporter who didn’t hit the door running, so to speak. Are you normally this quiet or has your personal involvement caused you to be reticent?” She leaned forward, staring at him as if to get a reading from his face.

  “You’re very perceptive, Your Honor.”

  “I should hope so.” She dragged off her cigarette and stubbed it out. Getting up, she walked to her bookcase and put the ashtray high up on a shelf. “I’m supposed to have quit.”

  Jim didn’t say anything. He’d never felt so uncomfortable in his life. If the anvil would get off his chest, he could at least breathe again.

  Judge Lopez glanced at her watch. “I usually go to lunch right at twelve so I can get back for my afternoon hearings.” She stood near him, expectantly.

  Jim felt himself begin to relax. The clock above the bookcase said it was nearly noon. “I wasn’t planning to interview you today,” he said. “I was caught off guard when my wife told you about the article.”

  “Your ex-wife?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He could smell her. She didn’t smell like roses. He couldn’t identify the scent, but at least she didn’t smell like Bitsy.

  “Tell me what your plans are.” She sat back down and hiked her feet up under her.

  He wet his lips. “To write from the man’s perspective. I don’t think that’s been done.”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t seen it, and I’ve read most articles on the subject.”

  “And then a series with perhaps the focus on five different families with five different problems.”

  “Sounds good. Are you experienced enough to carry it off?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I used to make my living as an investigative reporter. I’m working on the introductory article now. I’ve already sent some query letters with a proposal to several ma
gazines. If they bite, I want to have the first article ready.”

  “So why do you want to interview a judge?”

  He wracked his brain and went with his first thought. “To get a feel for what you think about the whole child support system.”

  Shaking her head, the judge said, “It’s my job. My feelings don’t enter into it.”

  Jim smiled out of one side of his mouth. “You don’t have any personal feelings about non-support?” Hard to believe.

  “I’m not saying that, Mr. Dorman. But my feelings are my own, and I keep them separate and apart from the job. That’s not to say I don’t get angry if someone is intentionally rude or disrespectful in the courtroom, but that has nothing to do with the law.”

  “Example.” He put his pen to paper and waited.

  “Okay. If someone says I’m unfair, that I didn’t give them a fair trial, that I favor the obligee—usually the mother—yes, that would make me angry because if you come here often enough, you’ll see that is simply not true.”

  “I’ve already seen it.”

  “I’ve had to throw out cases where I would have loved to put the contemnor in jail—sometimes the father, but not always—and throw away the key, but there was an error somewhere. Unlike some people, I follow the law.”

  Jim didn’t know to whom she was referring, wasn’t sure it was any of his business, and didn’t respond to the ‘some people’ remark. “So you enjoy putting people like me in jail?”

  Jim wrote as fast as he could.

  “Not people like you, no. I used to feel badly about putting men in jail—when I first got appointed to this position. Now I concentrate on how the children must feel when they don’t have enough food on the table or decent shoes or a respectable place to live. I think of those things when I pronounce sentence, and that way I’m able to get it out of my mouth.” She rubbed her arms like she was cold.

  “I find that very interesting, Judge Lopez. I thought—from my perspective out in the courtroom—that you performed your job with relish.”

  She waved her hand in the air. “All show. If I act like that, try to intimidate them, don’t you think they’ll get a job and pay?”

  “I know I’m working on it.”

  “Ha. Ha. Ha.” Her laugh was loud and came from the belly, different from the earlier cackle. Surprisingly, Jim liked the sound of it.

  She wiped her eyes and got herself under control. “Exactly. Don’t you see, Mr. Dorman, I don’t want you to go to jail. I want you to support your children.”

  “I’m not sure everyone understands that.”

  The judge smoothed the wrinkles out of her skirt. “Not my fault. Their perceptions are their problem. I don’t answer to them. I only have to answer to the administrative judge who appointed me as an associate judge, and I don’t worry about anybody else.” She glanced at her watch. “So what else would you like to know?”

  “About Mr. Johnson, if it’s okay for me to ask.”

  “Mr. Johnson?” Her face was a blank as a clean blackboard. “Who?”

  “The Suggestion of Death you read into the record?”

  “Oh. The man who died.”

  “Yes, ma’am. First of all, why was he allowed to get fifteen-thousand dollars in arrears?”

  “As I recall, it mostly happened before I got this job, but I’d surmise his ex-wife didn’t complain until his arrears were almost that high. Dumb broad. If you’re thinking I’m a cynic, you’re most definitely correct, Mr. Dorman. Now what else? I’d really like to get out of here before the crowd.” She put her feet down.

  “How did he die? Do you know? Was it listed in your file?”

  Shaking her head, she said, “It was on the death certificate, I’m sure. The death certificate was attached to the Suggestion of Death. You’re welcome to look at it. The file is a matter of public record.” She studied his face. “Why do you want to know?”

  Jim got up and put the chair back exactly where it had been before he sat down. “Just curious.” He didn’t think he could bring himself to remind her of what she had said to Mr. Johnson the previous month. Not only would it be rude, but she might deny it or get angry and he didn’t want to incur her wrath. “It just seemed weird that he died, that’s all.”

  Judge Lopez shrugged and stood up. “Well, people die all the time around here. Lots of collisions on the highways between small towns, you know that. I guess because we get so many it doesn’t seem odd to me.” They shook hands, and Judge Lopez walked him to the door. “Feel free to ask Mrs. Peterson for that file, and if you need anything else, come on back and see me.”

  Jim thanked her and hustled down the stairs to the clerk’s office to see Mrs. Peterson. He hoped the woman would give him the file and let him study it. He’d really wanted to ask Mr. Johnson how a person got fifteen thousand dollars behind in child support, but now his interest was more than that, a bad feeling about Mr. Johnson’s death that wouldn’t go away. Just thinking about the man raised the hair on his arms.

  Jim could see right off that Mrs. Peterson wasn’t in. He recognized the young lady at the counter as the one who brought papers to the court through the side door to the judge’s bench. “May I help you? Dorman, right? You want a copy of your printout?”

  “No. I came to see Mrs. Peterson about something else. She’s not here?”

  “No, sir. She left for lunch already. You want to leave her a message? You can give it to me.”

  “No. I was wondering if—well, about Mr. Johnson.”

  “Mr. Johnson? Which one, sir?”

  “I don’t know. The one who died.”

  “Do you know which one he’s talking about, Noel?”

  A young man sitting at the first desk said, “Albert Johnson, Liz. Remember his lawyer filed a Suggestion of Death?”

  “What about him?” She looked at Jim and back at the clock. Clearly she wanted to leave.

  “Does anyone know how he died?” Jim asked.

  “I don’t, sir,” the young woman said. “You’d have to look at the death certificate, and you have to talk to Mrs. Peterson to do that. Or you could call his lawyer. Now if there’s nothing else.”

  “Could I get his ex-wife’s address?” He glanced from her to the young guy, Noel. Noel busied himself with something.

  “We’re not allowed to give that out, sir,” she said.

  “I’m writing an article, see, and I wanted to interview her.”

  “You could go ask the judge, but I suggest you wait until this afternoon or next Friday when she’s back in town. She’s probably gone to lunch now like everyone else.”

  Two other women walked up from the back of the room, their purses in their hands. It was obvious they were all accustomed to leaving right at noon. Noel stood and pushed in his chair. That left one woman sitting in the back under the window, and she didn’t look like she was too willing to come forward and speak to him. Mrs. Peterson would be his best bet.

  Jim went out the door with the workers and ended up on the same elevator. “Do any of you know if Mr. Johnson paid any child support before he died?”

  The young woman wouldn’t meet his eyes. Her neck and cheeks turned pink. “I—I couldn’t say. You’d have to ask Mrs. Peterson or the Attorney General’s office.” She glanced at some of the other people in the elevator and shrugged.

  A vague uneasiness rattled in the pit of his stomach. The young woman stared up at the elevator numbers. When the elevator opened, she rushed away.

  The sun beat down at noon in the Texas Hill Country, a dry heat. Jim crossed the street to his car. His stomach growled reminding him what time it was. He had just about enough time to make his interview, not enough time to eat.

  “Mr. Dorman—Mr. Dorman. Don’t turn around.”

  The young man from the clerk’s office, Noel, the one who’d given him Albert Johnson’s name, strode past him. He looked about twenty, thin, taller than Jim, and had light brown hair.

  “Keep walking and don’t look at me.” Noel’
s long legs made short shrift of the distance between the curb and the other side of the street.

  Jim passed his car and continued walking. He sped up so he could keep up with the guy. It was like something out of a movie. He wondered what was going on, but decided to play along for a few more minutes.

  “Follow me to the alley, go into it. I’ll go around the block and meet you at the other end. I’ve got something for you.”

  “Look—”

  “It’s Ms. Johnson’s address. You want it, don’t you?”

  Jim turned his head to glance back over his shoulder.

  “Don’t look back,” the young man muttered. “I don’t know what’s involved. I think there’s something funny going on. I’m going to hand-off the address to you in the alley.”

  “Fine, son.”

  “It’s not illegal. You could have gotten it from their divorce file. It’s a matter of public record. The law requires them to file every change of address with the court if there are children involved. So I’m not breaking any laws. I just thought I’d make it easier for you.”

  “I appreciate that.” Jim had known that; he had just not gotten that far. The alley was only a few feet away, and he had so many questions. “Can I call you? What’s your last name?” Slowing, Jim made the corner of the alley and stopped when he was concealed by the building adjacent to the courthouse.

  “Wait there. I’ll be right in.” Noel continued to the end of the block.

  The alley was mostly patched pavement overgrown with weeds and a few wildflowers. Jim took a few steps toward the other end. Heat radiated off the brick buildings. People from the courthouse headed for a parking lot in the other direction. Moments later, Noel jogged into the other end of the alley, out of breath.

  “What’s going on? What’s so mysterious?” Jim asked.