Dirty Blonde

CHAPTER 11

It’s Elvis, from last night.

The anchorman was saying, “And in southwest Philadelphia, a tragic accident claims a man’s life. James Partridge was killed when he fell from a balcony at a motel here.”

“D’oh, I hate when that happens,” Sam joked, and behind him, Cate stood riveted.

The anchorman said, “Police say that Partridge, a frequent guest of the motel, may have lost his footing in the rain and was inebriated at the time of the fall. And in other news, an overturned tractor-trailer…”

Emily leaned over and switched off the TV. “Once again, the proverbial tractor-trailer.”

Sam laughed. “It gets ’em every time. Dang things can’t stay upright.”

But Cate was already backing out of the room. “I have work to do, guys,” she said, shaken, and retreated to her office.

She closed the door, hustled to her desk, and called Gina’s cell phone. She told her about the man’s death, hunched over the phone, confused and stricken. Her head began to pound, and she rubbed her forehead. When she finished, she felt vaguely nauseated. “Maybe I should go to the cops,” she said.

“Are you nuts? Why?”

“He probably fell down the stairs, trying to come after me.”

“Did you see that?”

“No, he was on the balcony when I left.” Cate squeezed her eyes shut but couldn’t remember for sure. “At least I thought he was-”

“So what, anyway? So what?”

“The man is dead, Geen. I was the last person to see him alive.”

“It wasn’t a murder, it was an accident. He fell down trying to rape you. You don’t owe him anything!” Gina could barely contain herself. “You wanna go to the cops? Tell them you pick up strange guys, in bars?”

Cate flushed, mortified. What was she thinking? For a judge, she had no judgment at all.

“You’d be risking your reputation, for nothing.”

Cate put her face in her hands, rattled to her foundation. What would she go to the police with? Even she knew she wasn’t making sense. She was screwing up so much lately, and now people were dying.

“Cate, you’re just panicking. Between the stuff with Simone and this, you’re just a mess.”

“Thanks.”

“Take a deep breath.”

“I left him alive.”

“Of course you did, and then he fell off the balcony because he was a falling-down-drunk, no-good-pig rapist.”

“God, this is so awful. He’s dead.”

“Yes, and you’re not,” Gina said, with finality. “Look, I gotta go, the pediatrician just came in. Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll call you later.”

“Thanks.” Cate hung up, so preoccupied she barely heard a knock at the door. “Yes?”

Val stuck her head inside, frowning with concern. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“Marz will have to get through me to get to you.”

“Aw, don’t even think that.” Cate willed herself to get it together. Nobody knew about the man last night and nobody ever would. She waved Val inside. “Sherman and the cops think Marz might-”

“I got the court-mail. I’ll keep an eye on the clerks, too.”

“Thanks, and you be careful. Marz may know what you look like.”

“I can take that little white boy.” Val lifted an attitudinal eyebrow.

“Not if he has a gun you can’t.”

“Pssht.” Val waved her off. “By the way, those flowers came for you while you were with Sherman.” She gestured at the conference table, where a huge bouquet of long-stemmed roses sprayed from a clear glass vase.

“Jeez.” Graham. Cate felt her chest tighten.

Val chuckled. “How’d you miss those? There’s two dozen there, I counted.”

Cate got up, crossed to the flowers, and slid the white envelope from its clear plastic trident and opened it. Judge, I have a major crush on you, but I promise to take it slower. Like-not love, Graham.

“And Graham Liss called again this morning,” Val said. “It’s none of my business, but between the phone calls and the two dozen roses, you might give the man a little attention. It’s about time you had a date. Now, did you remember you have oral argument at two o’clock?”

“Of course not,” Cate answered, turning with card in hand. “In what case?”

“Tourneau v. General Insurance. I ordered you a tuna fish salad for lunch.”

“Thanks, great idea.” Cate had meant to study the briefs and the bench memo last night. Now she’d have to go on the bench cold. “Where’s Emily? It’s her case, isn’t it?”

Val whispered, “She says you saw Simone’s picture on TV and got very upset.”

Great. “Don’t be silly. Open the door, please, Val. And cover your ears.” Val complied, and Cate called out, “Emily! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

And at the appointed hour, Cate was berobed and back in court, presiding atop the dais. From her first moment in the courtroom, she flashed on a freeze-frame of the very last time she’d sat here. Marz was launching himself at Simone. She saw it over and over until she walled off the thought and concentrated on the proceeding at hand, which involved a question of conflicts of laws. Before today, she’d thought of conflicts as an abstract area of the law, but now she knew that no area of the law was truly abstract. She’d seen the intersection of the law and human beings, and it ended in a head-on collision.

Cate collected herself and mustered a smile for plaintiff’s counsel. “Good afternoon, Mr. Gill.”

“Good afternoon, Your Honor.” Herman Gill was a standard-issue big-firm lawyer; tall, middle-aged white guy in a dark suit, horn-rimmed glasses, and brown wingtips, as if he’d been mugged by Brooks Brothers.

“What do we have today, specifically?” Cate asked, glancing at the papers.

“Your Honor, I will review the facts briefly. Plaintiff Jean-Patrice Tourneau is a decedent, a Pennsylvania resident and former CEO of VistaView Communications, Inc., a Pennsylvania corporation with its headquarters in Blue Bell.”

Cate listened, coming back down to earth. The defense lawyer, another big-firm squash player, crossed his pinstriped legs. She made notes, though she knew Emily had included it in her bench memo. The law clerk sat off to the side, taking her usual copious notes. She seemed better than she had been this morning, too. Sitting at his desk near her, the courtroom deputy was catching up on the crossword puzzle. The courtroom was back to normal. The pews sat empty, ten vacant rows of honey-hued wood, and Cate could see clear to the back wall, with its oil portraits of past district judges, all of them men with bald heads, horn-rimmed glasses, and somber smiles. The way you look, the way you act, even the way you dress. Cate wondered if she would ever feel like this were her courtroom.

Suddenly the door opened in the back, and the movement drew Cate’s attention. A man in a dark suit entered and sat down on a back bench. Something familiar about him gave Cate pause, then she realized who it was.

Gill was saying, “We urge the Court that there is a true conflict, because Indiana law, unlike District of Columbia law…”

Cate tuned out, her concentration broken. The man in the back was Detective Russo. He sat still, facing front, his arms folded. He couldn’t be here for the argument. Was he watching her? She couldn’t see his features at this distance. It unnerved her. She couldn’t get her bearings today, with so many distractions. Art Simone was dead, and so was the man from last night, Partridge. It was like a one-two punch, and now Russo was watching her, the sole spectator in the empty courtroom, sitting squarely in her line of vision.

In the next minute, Russo folded his arms. He knew she had to see him. Was he trying to intimidate her? Cate tried to catch the eye of the courtroom deputy, but he was doing the crossword, chewing the end of a pencil. Emily sat absorbed in her note-taking, her legal pad balanced on her lap.

Cate tried to focus on the proceeding but couldn’t. She would rule later in a written opinion; she wouldn’t rule from the bench, though she would have preferred it that way, and so would counsel. She’d always liked the quick answer when she was in practice. Gill finally concluded his argument, then defense counsel rose, took the lectern, and made an endless counterargument, but by then, Cate was dying to get off the bench. She couldn’t shake Russo’s gaze and felt it like a weight. Did he blame her for what Marz did? Could he blame her more than she blamed herself? As soon as the rebuttal was finished, Cate banged the gavel, ended the session, and practically fled the courtroom.

Russo was still sitting there when she left.

Keep a look out, tonight. A dark blue Subaru.

Cate shuddered, driving away from the courthouse. It was almost dark, and she’d ended the workday early, having fussed all afternoon with the same opinion, unable to clear her head enough to write. She hadn’t heard a word from Russo. He made no attempt to call chambers or contact her. She’d called Nesbitt and left a message for him at the Homicide desk, but he hadn’t called back yet. In truth, she didn’t know what she’d have said to him. Russo hadn’t done anything wrong and he wasn’t the threat to her. Marz was.

Do you have a gun?

Marz really could be out there. She couldn’t be in denial. She’d been fairly safe in her office, walled behind locks and federal marshals, but now she was on her own. She glanced in her rearview mirror at the car behind her, but it was too dark to tell its make. Its headlights were too high to be a Subaru. It must be an SUV.

She eyed the cars around her as she traveled down Race Street. Plumes of exhaust curled from the car bumpers, chalky in the bitter-cold night. She didn’t see a Subaru, but she wouldn’t have been able to tell one from a Toyota or Honda. She felt tense the whole time and took a quick right when the light changed, heading east to vary her driving routine, just in case. She drove all the way to her street with an eye in the rearview, and after she saw no Subaru on her street, wasted no time barreling into her garage, closing the door behind her, and hustling into the house, checking all the locks.

It wasn’t five minutes later that her doorbell rang.