Fatal Judgment. Andrew Welsh-Huggins

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      “Nothing to be sorry about, if you’re sure. And yes, I’ll be home. I promised Hopalong we could watch Homeward Bound again.”

      “Thanks,” she said, oblivious to the joke. She looked at her phone as if expecting it to ring once more. “And yes, I’m sure. I won’t be long, promise.”

      “That’s fine. But just in case, do you have a dollar?”

      “What?”

      “You heard me. A bill, preferably, but I’d take one of the Susan B. Anthony coins, too.”

      “Andy, please. I’ve got to get—”

      “Just a dollar.”

      Puzzlement filled her face as she stared at me. I didn’t look away. Sighing deeply, she dug into her purse, pulled out a wallet, opened it, and retrieved a bill. “I’m really not sure why you’re—”

      “Thank you,” I said, tucking it into my shirt pocket. “I’m considering that my retainer. I’m officially working for you now, which means I’ll need your permission before I can tell anyone about our conversation.”

      That almost won a smile. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it at the sound of a ping from her purse. She reached in, picked up her phone, looked at the screen, and tightened her lips. What I saw next on her face startled me: it was pure fear.

      I said, “It’s not too late to change your mind—I could still come along.”

      “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll see you soon.”

      “In that case I’ll be here. With the dollar.”

      She didn’t respond as I opened the door and climbed out. I waited just a moment, but she gave a little shake of her head. Reluctantly, I shut the door, and two seconds later she drove off. She paused briefly at the stop sign at Whittier, rolled through, and was gone.

      2

      AFTER A FEW SECONDS of fruitless staring down the street, I trudged up the walk to my house at 837 Mohawk. I was opening the door when I heard an engine roaring to life. I looked and saw a van leaving the curb a block down a little too quickly and heading in the same direction as the judge’s Lexus. It too rolled through the stop sign and was gone. I stared a moment longer before walking inside.

      I stomped to the rear, opened the door, and let Hopalong out into my postage stamp of a backyard. I refilled his water bowl, pulled a Black Label from the fridge, opened it, drained it in less time than it takes a jury to file in with its verdict, and grabbed another beer. I sat down at my kitchen table, started up my laptop, stood up and let the dog in, sat back down, and Googled Franklin County judge Laura Porter.

      For the next few minutes I studied the results, trying but failing to see anything that might explain what just happened. So far as I could tell, the Web hits were divided evenly between media accounts of cases she oversaw and references to her Supreme Court campaign against William O’Malley, an appeals court judge from Youngstown. The former links were the usual grab bag of activity that passes through any big city judge’s courtroom. A murder here, a burglary there: an environmental land dispute, an attempted murder, a medical malpractice claim. But as I scrolled down, one of the criminal cases caught my attention.

       WOMAN ARRESTED AFTER THREATENING JUDGE AT SENTENCING

      Six weeks ago, Laura sent a nineteen-year-old man to prison for sixty-three years for wounding a child in a drive-by shooting that left the boy permanently paralyzed. The defendant was black, as was the child, who was just seven years old. Immediately afterward, the man’s mother stood up and called Porter a bitch who hates black people. At her instruction, deputies dragged the woman out of the courtroom. She was charged with inducing panic and contempt of court. I wrote the woman’s name down. Could this be the problem?

       I’m in trouble . . . My God—are you all right?

      Whose call was it that ended our impassioned fumbling and flipped her switch so completely? Whose photo was on the caller ID I glimpsed? A family member? A lover? Someone from the courthouse? What was the subsequent text that scared Laura so? And was it my imagination, or had the van that pulled out moments after she left seemed in a bit of a hurry for a lazy late summer evening?

      I turned to the campaign web links. Unlike most political races, judicial competitions are normally about as exciting as watching Sherwin-Williams samples dry. Codes of conduct prevent a lot of the normal mudslinging. Third-party groups can get involved, pouring in unrestricted funds from the left and the right, but so far this had been a relatively uneventful face-off. Laura, a moderate Republican, had a small lead in the one and only poll taken so far. O’Malley, a Democrat, seemed a decent enough guy, and you couldn’t entirely write off his chances, if only because of his name. In Ohio as elsewhere, judges with Irish surnames earned an instant advantage in campaigns. His only blemish was a decade-old incident in which he admitted cheating on the number of hours he recorded for his continuing education classes. He blamed the mistake on procrastination brought on by stress. A professional conduct board cleared him of wrongdoing. Small potatoes in the world of political scandals, and it was unclear if voters cared—or even knew there was a campaign on and who the candidates were. At this point, it was probably Laura’s race to lose.

      I threw in the towel after an hour. Whatever trouble Laura was in, it wasn’t in the public record or related to the race, so far as I could see. I opened the front door and glanced up and down the street. No sign of her Lexus, or a van in a hurry. I took a third Black Label into the living room, picked up my copy of Glass House, and started reading, checking the time every few minutes or so.

      Everything OK? I texted when two hours had passed. No response. Half an hour later I tried calling, but got only voice mail. The greeting unchanged after all this time: “Hi, it’s Laura. You know the drill.” I didn’t bother leaving a message. Unease growing, I went back to my book, reading until my eyes started to droop, which was right around the time Hopalong was scratching the back door for one last trip outside. I sent a final text before heading to bed:

      Come by no matter what time.

      My phone stayed silent.

      I’VE PASSED MORE RESTFUL nights in jail cells ahead of arraignments. When I awoke shortly after six o’clock, feeling as exhausted as when my head hit the pillow, the first thing I did was pick up my phone. My heart skipped a beat. There was a missed call from Laura shortly before midnight which somehow I’d slept through. A call, but no message. Sitting up, still half asleep, I pressed redial but once again got only voice mail.

      This time I left a message, hung up, and tried again immediately. Same result. I debated what to do, though I knew within seconds there was only one choice, as dramatic as it seemed. Because something was wrong. The trouble she said she was in. The strange call: My God—are you all right? The van pulling away from the curb, fast. Her promise to return, followed by radio silence, followed by a call but no voice mail.

      Fifteen minutes later, shaved and clutching a travel mug of coffee, I was in my Honda Odyssey headed north to her condo in an upscale faux–English cottage development off Dublin Road on the northwest side. The place she bought after the divorce occasioned by her husband’s declaration at breakfast one morning that he was leaving her for an associate at his blue-chip downtown law firm. The other woman only a bit older than half Laura’s age. A declaration—from the little I knew of the event—as unexpected as a blow to the head with a two-by-four. How СКАЧАТЬ