Read Online The Judge by Steve Martini - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Steve Martini
Tags: Fiction
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stool in the interest of safety, and she dials. She waits several seconds, and then: "It's me." It is all she says. The voice on the other end takes over. I assume this is Tony. It is a one-sided conversation, and as I watch, Lenore's face is transformed through a dozen aspects: from abject indifference to keen interest, like the phases of the moon.
"Where are you now?" she says.
"Tell him I want to talk to him." I'm trying to get her attention, but she is riveted by whatever is being said at the other end.
Lenore ignores me, and makes a note on a pad hanging on the wall. "How did it happen?"
"Who else is there?" A momentary pause. Anyone from the D.A.'s office? " She fires staccato questions without tune for much reply, like whoever is at the other end doesn't know much. Any idea when it happened?" There is a long pause here. The look on Lenore's face is unadulterated bewilderment. "Any witnesses?" There is some lengthy explanation here, but Lenore cakes no notes.
"I'll be there in ten minutes," she says, and hangs up.
At this moment she is not looking at me as much as through me, to some distant point in another world.
"What's wrong? Tony?" I ask. She nods, but does not answer. "What is it?"
"Brittany Hall," she says. It is as if she were in a trance, mesmerized by whatever it is she has heard on the phone. She gazes in a blank stare at the wall and speaks.
"They found her body an hour ago in a Dumpster," she says. "Behind the D.A.'s office."
H hen we pull up to the curb there are a half dozen police cars parked in their usual fashion, which is any way they like to leave them, light bars blazing blue and red. A handful of vagrants stand outside the yellow tape that closes off the entrance to the alley behind G Street.
In any other neighborhood in town, this activity, the commotion of cops, would draw a crowd of home owners and other residents. But here, across from the courthouse in the middle of the night, the only interested parties look like refugees from a soup kitchen, a few homeless bums who have been evicted from the alley, who stand shivering in threadbare blankets and other discards from the Goodwill.
Inside the tape is a smaller throng of men and one woman in uniform.
I recognize one of the Homicide dicks. They must have plucked him from his bed. He is wearing exercise pants and a gray sweatshirt that looks like something from a Knute Rockne movie.
"You better let me do the talking." Lenore does sign language as she speaks to me, the kind of gestures you expect from someone who gets giddy with a couple of drinks. I am here for that very reason. In the moments after Tony's phone call I seized her keys and made arrangements with a woman on my block, a friend and neighbor, to catch a few winks on my couch while Sarah sleeps upstairs. I was not about to let Lenore drive. Right now Kline would like nothing more than to see her arrested for drunk driving.
I can see Tony Arguillo milling a hundred feet down the alley. Well inside the familiar yellow ribbon, he is beyond earshot unless we want to make a scene.
"Stick close," she says. And before I can move around the car, I hear the click other heels on the street as she crosses over. I am trailing in her wake, trying to catch up so that she doesn't get hit by a car.
Without her prosecutor's I.D., Lenore is banking on the fact that the cops won't know she has been fired. That news may take at least a day to trickle down to the street.
Before I can catch her, she cozies up to one of the uniforms at the tape.
"Where's Officer Arguillo?" Her best command voice under the circumstances, and not much slurring.
A familiar face, the guy doesn't look too closely, or smell her breath. Instead she gets the perennial cop's shrug. Lenore takes this as the signal of admission, and before the man in blue can say a word she is under the tape. For a moment he looks as though he might challenge her, then gives it up. Why screw with authority?
"He's
"Where are you now?" she says.
"Tell him I want to talk to him." I'm trying to get her attention, but she is riveted by whatever is being said at the other end.
Lenore ignores me, and makes a note on a pad hanging on the wall. "How did it happen?"
"Who else is there?" A momentary pause. Anyone from the D.A.'s office? " She fires staccato questions without tune for much reply, like whoever is at the other end doesn't know much. Any idea when it happened?" There is a long pause here. The look on Lenore's face is unadulterated bewilderment. "Any witnesses?" There is some lengthy explanation here, but Lenore cakes no notes.
"I'll be there in ten minutes," she says, and hangs up.
At this moment she is not looking at me as much as through me, to some distant point in another world.
"What's wrong? Tony?" I ask. She nods, but does not answer. "What is it?"
"Brittany Hall," she says. It is as if she were in a trance, mesmerized by whatever it is she has heard on the phone. She gazes in a blank stare at the wall and speaks.
"They found her body an hour ago in a Dumpster," she says. "Behind the D.A.'s office."
H hen we pull up to the curb there are a half dozen police cars parked in their usual fashion, which is any way they like to leave them, light bars blazing blue and red. A handful of vagrants stand outside the yellow tape that closes off the entrance to the alley behind G Street.
In any other neighborhood in town, this activity, the commotion of cops, would draw a crowd of home owners and other residents. But here, across from the courthouse in the middle of the night, the only interested parties look like refugees from a soup kitchen, a few homeless bums who have been evicted from the alley, who stand shivering in threadbare blankets and other discards from the Goodwill.
Inside the tape is a smaller throng of men and one woman in uniform.
I recognize one of the Homicide dicks. They must have plucked him from his bed. He is wearing exercise pants and a gray sweatshirt that looks like something from a Knute Rockne movie.
"You better let me do the talking." Lenore does sign language as she speaks to me, the kind of gestures you expect from someone who gets giddy with a couple of drinks. I am here for that very reason. In the moments after Tony's phone call I seized her keys and made arrangements with a woman on my block, a friend and neighbor, to catch a few winks on my couch while Sarah sleeps upstairs. I was not about to let Lenore drive. Right now Kline would like nothing more than to see her arrested for drunk driving.
I can see Tony Arguillo milling a hundred feet down the alley. Well inside the familiar yellow ribbon, he is beyond earshot unless we want to make a scene.
"Stick close," she says. And before I can move around the car, I hear the click other heels on the street as she crosses over. I am trailing in her wake, trying to catch up so that she doesn't get hit by a car.
Without her prosecutor's I.D., Lenore is banking on the fact that the cops won't know she has been fired. That news may take at least a day to trickle down to the street.
Before I can catch her, she cozies up to one of the uniforms at the tape.
"Where's Officer Arguillo?" Her best command voice under the circumstances, and not much slurring.
A familiar face, the guy doesn't look too closely, or smell her breath. Instead she gets the perennial cop's shrug. Lenore takes this as the signal of admission, and before the man in blue can say a word she is under the tape. For a moment he looks as though he might challenge her, then gives it up. Why screw with authority?
"He's
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