Judgment Page 12

  “So he says.”

  “So he says. But I believe him.” Well, she didn’t know for sure, of course. But she had to believe him.

  “What about your kids? Have you talked with them?”

  “Haven’t had a chance. I dread it. I mean, Ashley could maybe deal with it, but this is the last thing Jake needs, his parents splitting up.”

  “Hmm.” She clasped and unclasped her hands. Juliana could hear the steady ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer. The walls were painted pale yellow and hung with fine antique oil portraits of relatives.

  “What does Philip say?”

  “I haven’t told him yet.”

  “You haven’t? Tell him at once. If you’re right, and it wasn’t a suicide—if what you saw was a murder—you may have something to worry about.”

  Juliana nodded, put down her drink, and reached for her phone. She sent off a brief text to Hersh, telling him about Matías and that she needed to speak with him tomorrow.

  She saw a photograph in a silver frame on a side table and picked it up. A woman in her fifties or sixties wearing a black-and-white-striped shirt, like the gondoliers in Venice wear. She had an impish smile. A boathouse in the background. It looked like Cambridge and the Charles River, probably the Harvard boathouse. “I’m sorry I never knew Iris,” she said.

  Martie’s face clouded. Iris, who’d died of cancer ten years ago, had been the love of Martie’s life. She had been a Shakespeare scholar at Harvard and an avid rower.

  “Me too,” she said. “You would have enjoyed her. She’d have admired your mind.”

  Juliana looked at the picture a moment longer and then put it down. “Not only have I wrecked my marriage, but I’ve put my family in danger. Now I don’t know what to do.”

  “I wouldn’t say you’ve wrecked your marriage. It’s probably a good deal more resilient than you give it credit for. But you’re cornered. They can still release that video.”

  “It’s already done its damage.”

  “Oh, there’s a lot more it can do. That . . . gigolo was a party to a case you’re presiding over. You could be sanctioned by the CJC, and worse.” The CJC was the Commission on Judicial Conduct, the secretive body that investigated all judges accused of wrongdoing. “It would destroy your public standing, love. It would end your career. We don’t want this video made public. You can’t be associated with this man.”

  “Oh, God, what have I done?”

  “I know this looks bleak, but there’s nothing to be done about it tonight. Right now, what you need is rest. Let me show you to your bedroom and get you some towels and whatnot. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”

  “You’re the best.”

  She thought of something and retrieved her purse from the floor next to her chair. She rifled through the purse, groaned, looked up. “Oh, God.”

  “Anything you’ve forgotten I’m sure I can provide.”

  “My sunglasses.” Her stomach went tight.

  “That I can’t help you with. You’ll have to stop home tomorrow, pick up some clothes while you’re at it.”

  But Juliana’s thoughts were elsewhere. “My purse fell when I saw his—body. I nearly fainted, and everything went flying. My sunglasses must have gone under the desk or something. I must not have seen them.”

  “Is your name on them? Are they in a case?”

  Her head was pounding. “My name’s not on the case, but—” She pulled her car keys from her purse and stood up, her eyes throbbing.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I need to get them back before the police declare it a crime scene.”

  “What if it is already?”

  “Then I’ll turn around.”

  “Don’t go back there,” Martie said. “Plus, you’ve had a drink. I don’t think you should drive.”

  “You’re right about driving,” Juliana said. “I’ll get a Lyft. But I have to get over there now.”

  29

  It was past midnight, but she was wide awake. A terrible panic had seized her, electrified her blood. The Honda Accord hurtled along the Mass. Turnpike. It was not the route she’d have taken, but she was too distraught to say anything to the Lyft driver. Was she leaping to conclusions? Might she have dropped her sunglasses in her car? She was pretty sure she hadn’t. She kept her car tidy and would have noticed. No, she was increasingly certain that they’d fallen out in the hotel room and were still there, probably under the desk.

  Assuming the police hadn’t been called, she was then faced with the problem of getting into the hotel room. That was a tough one. All the housekeepers would have left for the day. Hotel security? A low-cost, bare-minimum hotel like the Home Stay Inn probably didn’t have security. Just someone at the front desk.

  Well, there had to be a way. She would figure something out.

  From a block away she saw the flashing blue lights of the police cruisers double-parked in front of the hotel.

  Her mouth went dry. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “Can you take me back to Boston?”

  The driver, a Vietnamese man with an unusually wrinkled face, gave her a baffled look and pulled a U-turn on the deserted street.

  Her thoughts raced. The housekeeper must have notified her manager, who called the police. She was pretty sure it would be treated by the police like a possible homicide, the room designated a crime scene.

  Her sunglasses. Even a rudimentary search of the room would turn them up. But they wouldn’t know whose they were, would they? There was no way to connect them to her. Was there?

  Fingerprints. Her prints were all over the sunglasses. And her ten prints had been in the system since she joined the US Attorney’s office, however many years ago. It might not happen immediately, but the crime scene techs would put the glasses in an evidence bag and run the prints, and her name would come right up. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in the next few days. Then she would be connected to Matías Sanchez no matter what she did.

  She stared out the window at the whizzing cars, the streaking lights. What a goddamned rookie mistake it was to go back to his hotel room! She was finding it hard to think clearly. Were there any strings to pull? Somehow she had to keep her name out of this investigation. Was that even possible?

  The worlds of the Boston Police and the Superior Court barely overlapped, except when a cop wanted a warrant approved. She wouldn’t know whom in the police to call. And what could she hope to accomplish? The police would want to know why her sunglasses were there. The housekeeper had surely already told the police that she’d discovered the body while letting in a woman who claimed to be his wife. It wouldn’t take long for the police to figure out she’d been in his room earlier that day. They’d want to question her; she couldn’t get around that. They’d want to know why she’d been there.

  What kind of an answer could she give them? Anything she told them would drag her in, force her to disclose what had happened, and that had to be avoided at all costs.

  If she made calls to anyone, she’d just be incriminating herself. There was nothing she could do.

  By the time she arrived back at the Ritz and took the elevator to the seventh floor, it was almost one in the morning. Martie, who’d given her a key, had left a few lights on for her. Lucy barked a few times, shrilly, but then, fortunately, stopped. She flipped off the lights and found her bedroom, and very quickly she was asleep.

  30

  The jury in her morning trial was out, luckily, so she was able to work quietly with Kaitlyn in her lobby. She’d barely gotten a few hours of sleep and was grateful for the slow pace of the day. She skipped lunch, had no appetite.

  Every time her phone rang her first thought was that it was the Boston Police. But the call never came.

  The afternoon was busy, with a number of oral arguments and motions. But she was glad to be busy. It distracted her.
She kept seeing the man’s body, his grotesquely contorted face. The man had been murdered.

  What did that mean about her? Might she be a target too?

  She entered the courtroom, and everyone stood. She sat down in the high-backed leather chair and looked around. She felt a low-grade dread. She was finding it hard to concentrate. She said, “Are we all here?”

  Harlan Madden kept looking back at the door.

  Juliana said, “Should we wait for your co-counsel?” She felt dry-mouthed and tense and wary.

  “Well, frankly, Your Honor, he hasn’t been answering messages, so let’s just continue without him.”

  Juliana felt her stomach drop. She had to be careful about what she said. She needed to think clearly. Coffee would help, but she had to avoid drinking too much: caffeine would make her even more anxious.

  That afternoon the two sides in the Wheelz case were presenting oral arguments. A few weeks earlier, the defense had asked Rachel, in the form of an interrogatory, to describe all “sexual and romantic relationships” she’d had in the last five years. Glenda Craft wouldn’t let her reply. That was an outrage, she said. So Harlan Madden had served a motion to compel her to answer. Then both sides filed briefs. Today they would go at it full bore in the courtroom, arguing over whether the defense had the right to grill Rachel on her sex life before she started working for Wheelz.

  When she first became a judge, Juliana was astonished at how different it was from being a trial attorney. It was like going from mono to stereo, from black-and-white to Technicolor. All of a sudden she had to listen with both sides of her brain, understand dueling arguments at the same time. You had to see three-hundred-sixty degrees. You had to keep an eye on which juror was sleeping. You also had to make decisions with alarming speed, sometimes. You saw a lot of suffering and felt the stress of wanting to get every decision right. You had to be extremely empathic. You had to understand the humanity, the greed, or the sorrow of the defendant and the anguish of the victim’s family.

  Make one bad decision, and the whole thing gets flipped on appeal.

  “Good afternoon, counsel,” she said. “I’ve read the papers. Mr. Madden, it’s your motion; I’ll hear you.”

  Madden stood at the counsel table. “Judge, as you know, this is a sex-discrimination suit. We’ve propounded interrogatories to the plaintiff, but she has declined to answer questions regarding her romantic history, which are clearly relevant.” He looked at Glenda Craft. “Part of the plaintiff’s burden here, Your Honor, is to show that the work environment at Wheelz was hostile or offensive, to show it was unwelcome. We think if Ms. Meyers is required to answer these questions, the evidence will show whether the atmosphere at Wheelz was in fact unwelcome, which is the plaintiff’s burden of proof at trial. We believe that Ms. Meyers’s prior sexual history will show that the conduct she encountered at Wheelz was something she was accustomed to. We think this information is directly relevant.”

  Juliana stifled a yawn, exhausted yet tense. “Thank you, Mr. Madden. Ms. Craft, what do you have to say to this?”

  Glenda Craft stood. “Your Honor, the defense’s goal here is nothing less than to embarrass and humiliate the plaintiff. They’re just trying to defame her. They’re trying to imply that Ms. Meyers had a bad moral character—which has no bearing on the conduct within the company. Her sexual history has no relevance to what happened at Wheelz during her tenure there. This is just character assassination, plain and simple.”

  Glenda Craft paused, and Juliana broke in, “Thank you, Ms. Craft. It was helpful to hear from both of you.” There was no point in letting them both go on at length. She already knew what they were going to say, they’d said it in writing, and she’d made up her mind anyway. She was tired and finding it hard to concentrate.

  “As I said, I’ve read the papers, and I’m familiar with this area of the law. So I’m going to rule from the bench.” Both lawyers looked at her sharply, surprised. “I’m going to allow the motion in part and deny it in part. I’m going to deny the motion with respect to any sexual or romantic relationship not connected to the workplace. Anything that happened while she was employed at Wheelz, any sexual relationship with a fellow employee, is relevant and discoverable. It’s fair game.” Madden half rose to object, and Juliana—tired and stressed and needing to get the hell out of there—shut it down: “Thank you, all.”

  31

  How much longer is this going to go on?” Juliana said on the phone.

  “I don’t know,” Duncan said. “We have a lot to talk about, but I’m not ready to talk.”

  “Well, can I come home for a while tonight so we can all talk as a family?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “We need to tell Jake what’s going on.”

  “I already did. He asked where you were this morning, and I told him that we’d had an argument and you were temporarily staying with Judge Connolly.”

  “That’s all you told him?”

  “Just that. He asked for details, and I said we’d talk later. He wasn’t happy to be kept in the dark.”

  “I’ll give him a call, if you don’t mind.” She thought, in pique: He’s my son too.

  As soon as she hung up, she called Jake’s phone, but it went right to voice mail. She texted, Call me. A moment later, she typed Matías Sanchez’s name into Google to see if his death had been reported anywhere. Not so far as she could see. She was about to call Hersh when her office landline phone rang. She picked it up.

  “Yeah, I’m looking for Judge Brody,” a man said. “This is Austin Bream from The Boston Globe.”

  She recognized the name. Bream was a columnist with a reputation for breaking scoops, usually having to do with city government fraud or abuse. He was trouble. She hesitated a moment, thought about pretending to be someone else, a clerk or a secretary. “Speaking,” she finally said.

  “I assume you’ve heard about Matías Sanchez.”

  So it begins. It was out there. “I’m sorry, who?”

  “A lawyer from Chicago named Sanchez. He was in town on a case before your court.”

  “What about Mr. Sanchez?”

  “He was found dead last night in his hotel in Allston. Police are calling it a suicide. I was wondering if you had any comment.”

  She quickly weighed the pros and cons of talking to a reporter. And realized there were no pros. Speaking to Bream would just feed the beast, make a story where there didn’t need to be one. “I’m sorry, Mr. Bream, I really can’t comment. This is the first I’m hearing of it. I’m sorry to hear of this man’s death, but I can’t say anything further.” She disconnected the call.

  So the death had probably appeared on the police log overnight. Maybe the hotel had identified Matías Sanchez. His only connection to her was that he had argued in her court. His appearance in court was a matter of public record. Apart from that, no one would connect him with her, she was sure. She was fairly certain she hadn’t left fingerprints.

  But what if they found the sunglasses?

  Her cell phone rang.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m outside the courthouse.” Hersh.

  “I’ll be out in five minutes or so,” she said, standing to leave even before she’d hung up. She’d left him another message first thing in the morning and had been waiting all day for a call back.

  She didn’t recognize him at first. He looked like an old pensioner, down at the heels, wearing a threadbare herringbone scally cap and smoking a cigarette in front of the courthouse. Maybe he changed looks for different jobs. She tapped him on one shoulder, and he turned slowly.

  “I didn’t notice you smoked.”

  “I don’t.” He exhaled, his grin wreathed in smoke. “Well, not often. What can I do for you, Judge Brody?”

  “Didn’t you used to be a police detective in Boston?”

  He nodded.
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  “You still know people?”

  “A few. Why?”

  “I have a feeling the Boston Police may be contacting me.”

  “Why?”

  She hesitated. “I’m pretty sure I left my sunglasses in his hotel room.”

  She could see recognition dawn on his face.

  “That would be unfortunate. Is your name on them?”

  “No. Just my fingerprints. Can you get them back for me?”

  “From a crime scene?” His eyebrows shot up. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t stop them from doing their job. You know that. Anyway, by now I’m sure they’ve already been logged in as evidence.”

  “Maybe I got lucky and they didn’t find them.”

  He shrugged, took a drag on his cigarette. “Maybe. Are your prints in the system?”

  “I used to work in the US Attorney’s office.”

  “So they are. Well, we can hope that the death is treated as a suicide, in which case they’re not likely to run prints.” Twin plumes of smoke unspooled from his nostrils. “Did you happen to notice any CCTVs in the hotel, in the halls and lobby?”

  “Cameras? A few. But I wore a hat and sunglasses.”

  “Then you’re still on tape. Let’s hope you can’t be identified.”

  “Let me ask you something. Candidly. Should I be afraid?”

  “Because of what happened to Sanchez?”

  “Right.”

  “Look,” he said. “You take every precaution to try to prevent disaster—”

  “Knowing you may fail,” she cut in, recalling his exact words.

  “You got it.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway?” she said.

  “You don’t agree?”

  “It doesn’t exactly help. It’s just a very dark vision. Pretty extreme.”

  “Is it? You’ve got kids; I don’t. Aren’t parents always reassuring their kids there’s no monster under the bed?”

  She just gave him her skeptical look. When she did it on the bench, she unnerved whichever lawyer she aimed it at. But Hersh seemed unmoved. “Well, guess what. You’ve been lying to them and to yourself. Hell, yeah, you bet your ass there’s monsters under the bed.”