Howtown (25 page)

“Whose idea was it for her to come here? Not hers.”

“I know what you can be like when you get an idea in your head to do something,” she said. “Ruth’s just a girl. No match for you.”

“But you are,” I said sharply, irritated by her hostility and self-righteousness. “You knew Ruth might get dragged into the case, so you suggested to Sara that she hire me to be Paul’s lawyer, to give yourself some strings to pull.”

She reached for her cigarettes. “What strings? We’ve hardly spoken in ten years.”

“We grew up together, remember? Alcoholic father, crazy mother? You knew I’d feel sorry for Ruth. You hoped I’d protect her. But you couldn’t quite trust me, could you? So you brought her here.”

From behind a veil of smoke, she said, “You wanted her to testify. I’m not about to let anyone hurt her.”

“But it’s all right if Paul goes to jail for something he didn’t do.”

“Paul’s done quite enough to deserve jail.”

“There’s not much scope to your compassion.”

She jabbed out the cigarette. “It doesn’t encompass child molesters, if that’s what you mean.”

“Or
male
homosexuals.”

She slapped me, hard, jerking my head back. “You contemptible son-of-a-bitch.”

I grabbed her wrist. “Do you think I care whether you’re a lesbian?”

She yanked her hand free. “So you pry out of disinterested cruelty?” she demanded. “Does that make it all right?”

“Elena, I’m here because you brought me into this case. Why?”

She massaged her wrist. “I was curious about you,” she said. “I wanted to know what kind of man you’ve grown up to be.”

“You didn’t give me much of a chance to show you.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I also wanted you to find out about me, Henry.”

“I have,” I said. “You’re a decent human being. The rest is unimportant.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for saying that.”

“Now let me show you that I am, too.”

Just then, the door opened, and Carlos ran into the room, shrieking, “Grandma, look what I have.”

He saw me and froze. Ruth came in behind him and, behind her, a heavy middle-aged black woman. Joanne, the famous roommate.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“Joanne, this is my brother, Henry.”

I stood up. “Hello.”

“Hello,” she said, ignoring my outstretched hand. To Elena she said, “What is he doing here?”

“He came to tell me that Sara Windsor is dead,” she replied.

Moving swiftly to Elena she said, “I’m so sorry, honey. What happened?”

Elena reached up and took Joanne’s hand. “I’ll tell you later. Henry wants to speak to Ruth now.”

Ruth had sat down in a chair, and was staring at me. Carlos went over to her and clutched her knee.

“Mrs. Windsor’s dead?” she asked.

I nodded. “Ruth, why did you leave town?”

She looked at me for a moment, then said. “The detective told me I had to leave.”

“Who? Morrow?”

She bit her lip and nodded. “Until the trial was over, he said. He said if I left you couldn’t make me testify.”

“Did you tell him I’d talked to you?”

“No, he already knew.”

Vega, I thought. Vega. He must have told Morrow that I had a surprise witness and Morrow had figured it out.

Ruth demanded, “What does this mean, Henry?”

“It means the police are trying to convict Paul for a murder he didn’t commit.”

P
ROMPTLY AT ONE-THIRTY,
Kevin Reilly and I presented ourselves in the courtroom of Judge Frances Flynn just in time to hear her sentence to state prison, for the highest term possible, a man convicted of robbery who had no prior record.

I leaned over to Kevin and said, “Does she always sentence like that?”

He whispered back, “The public defenders call her Frying Flynn.”

“
People versus Thurmond
,” she said, then with a baffled look turned to her clerk. “What’s this here for, Luis?”

“A motion to unseal the record, Your Honor,” the little Latino answered. “Mr. Reilly is the attorney.”

“Oh, is that why Mr. Reilly is here,” she said with a relenting smile.

Kevin got up and grabbed me. “Come on,” he said. We went through the railing to counsel table and Kevin said, “Good morning, Your Honor. Kevin Reilly on the motion, and my associate, Henry Rios.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, warmly, “I’ve heard of you, Mr. Rios, but I don’t think I’ve ever had the pleasure of having you in my court before.”

“The pleasure’s all mine.”

“So, let me see what we have here.” She glanced down, occasionally making a comment. “ ‘Material evidence’ … ‘related prosecution’ … ‘possible alibi.’ ” She looked up. “I don’t see any opposition by the district attorney.”

“This is an ex parte application, Your Honor,” Kevin said.

She frowned. “You didn’t serve this on the People?”

“We did, Your Honor. If you’ll look at my declaration you’ll see that I talked to the attorney who prosecuted the case and he indicated that he would not oppose the motion.”

Judge Flynn read along, muttering to herself. “Well, I don’t really like these ex parte matters but since the People aren’t opposing it, I’ll grant the motion.”

“Your Honor, could that order be forthwith so that we could take it down to the clerk’s office?”

“Yes, all right.” She wrote something and then handed the sheet of paper to her clerk. “How is Mrs. Reilly?”

“She sends her regards, Your Honor,” Kevin said, his voice mysteriously acquiring an Irish lilt.

“Yes, tell her I said hello, will you?”

“Thank you very much, Your Honor,” Kevin said.

“Nice to see you, Mr. Reilly, and you, too, Mr. Rios.”

When her clerk finished writing up the order, I grabbed it and we went down to the court’s records office where Kevin and I parted company. I went in and laid the order on the counter, explaining to the young, indifferent woman what it was. She stared at it as if it were a Dead Sea scroll, then took it and wandered off into a room behind the counter.

A few minutes later, she returned. “You want the file, right?”

“That’s right.”

“That file’s sealed.”

I smiled, tightly. “Yes, I know that. That’s why I got this order from Judge Flynn, to unseal the record.”

“I never heard of nothin’ like that.”

I was about to educate her as crudely as possible when her supervisor appeared. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

I tapped the order. “I would like to see this file.”

He read it. “So, what’s the problem?”

“There won’t be one if you’ll bring it to me,” I snapped.

He bunched his eyebrows together ominously. “Greta, get the file.”

She again retreated into the bureaucratic tundra, emerging with a surprisingly slim file sealed with a piece of tape that read, “Not to be opened except upon order of the court.” Her supervisor took it and, with great ceremony, cut the seal.

“Satisfied?” he asked, handing it across the counter.

“Thank you.”

I opened it up to the complaint. It was in eight counts. Five alleged a violation of penal code section 288, lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under the age of sixteen. The remaining three alleged sodomy and oral copulation. The child-victim was identified simply as “B, a child under the age of 16.” The last two counts identified the victim as “D., a minor.”

Digging further, I found two minute orders from the Woodlin County Superior Court. The first recorded that the defendant, Thurmond, was held to answer on all charges and bound over for trial. The second recorded the transfer of the action to San Francisco following the granting of a motion to change venue. I searched the file for either the preliminary transcript or the motion to learn the identity of the victims but neither was to be found. I mentioned this to the clerk.

“Geez, I don’t know why they didn’t send it,” she said.

“Maybe there’s more to the file.”

She shook her head. “That was it. They probably just kept that stuff at the other court.”

“Well, could you just check to see if there’s another file?”

Grudgingly, she wandered off while I went through what remained of the San Francisco file. There were various form motions, discovery, suppression of evidence, which I recognized as the work of the San Francisco public defender’s office, but none of these mentioned the victim’s name. Finally, there was a minute order recording that the defendant pled to three counts of the complaint and was sentenced to five years in state prison and ordered to register as a sex offender upon his release.

The clerk came back. “That’s it.”

I made copies of the complaint and the Woodlin court minute orders and went out to a pay phone. I asked the Woodlin court clerk’s office whether they had a file for the case. The clerk went off to look, and when he came back on the line he told me the file had been sealed by order of the court.

I went downstairs to the court cafeteria for a cup of coffee and to think. I was stymied. It seemed unlikely that I would prevail in a motion to unseal the Woodlin court file as easily as I had here. I flipped through the complaint and read, “B., a child under the age of 16,” and “D., a minor.” The distinction was that D. could have been as old as 17 while B. was under 16.

B. D. Woodlin County. Fifteen years ago.

And then I got it.

The county seat of Woodlin was the little town of Nueces. It had a main street called Main Street. There was a cemetery at one end of the street, and a grammar school at the other. I parked my car near the school and got out. There wasn’t anything Norman Rockwellesque about Nueces. The small businesses that lined Main Street traded more in nostalgia than chattels; behind fly specked storefronts many were vacant, violated, fixtures torn from the walls, empty shelves gathering dust, linoleum floors cracked and faded. The only place that seemed to be doing any business was a bar called La Cabana. Mexican ballads drifted out from behind its doors. Down the street was a restaurant called El Faisan. I pushed open the door, setting off a tinkling bell. The place had a couple of booths upholstered in orange vinyl, some tables and a counter that looked into the kitchen. A plump-faced Mexican woman standing at the counter smiled at me.

“Any place,” she said.

I went over to her. “I’m looking for the high school.”

She came out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a flowered apron. A thin greasy smell hung in the air, familiar to me from my mother’s kitchen, refried beans, stewed meat, onions.

“Es that way,” she said flapping her hand behind me. She looked at me, and added, “
Detras del cemetario
,
en la calle Walnut. Acercita
.”

“
Muchas gracias
,
señora
. Smells good in here.”

She smiled broadly at the compliment, gold shining dully in her mouth. “
Pues
,
cuando acabas en la escuela vuelves aqui y comes algo
.”

I went back out and followed her directions, walking alongside the cemetery to Walnut Street. I could see the school from the corner, an Art Deco building. Around it square concrete bunkers huddled like a squatter’s camp.

School was out for the day. The corridors smelled of chalk and Lysol. In the registration office I asked to see the principal. The woman to whom I spoke raised ribboned glasses from her ample breasts, fixed them on her face and looked at me, then got up and went into an adjoining room. A minute later, she reappeared with Santa Claus in tow.

Santa said, “I’m Mr. Hendricksen, did you want to see me?”

“Yes, my name is Henry Rios. I’m a lawyer.”

The silver-haired, red-faced fat man looked alarmed. “Why don’t you come into my office, Mr. Rios.” He held open a swinging door to let me in behind the counter.

I sat down and surveyed the room. Faded pep posters on the wall and drawn blinds gave the place a look of indescribable sadness. Slats of light glanced across the cluttered desk and dusty bookshelves. Atop one of the bookshelves was a framed picture of football team, circa 1950-something.

Observing my interest in the picture, Hendricksen said, “That was the year we were number one in the valley.”

“You in that picture?”

He smiled, creasing his double chin. “Running back.” He patted his gut. “That was a long time ago. So what can I do for you, Mr. Rios?”

“I’m interested in Howard Thurmond. I think he used to teach here.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Is that right?”

“Mr. Hendricksen, I’m a criminal defense lawyer,” I said. “I represent a man in Los Robles named Paul Windsor. Maybe you’ve heard of him.”

He nodded. “I read something about it in the papers. He killed someone, didn’t he?”

“So they say,” I replied. “What’s important is that I believe the dead man was Howard Thurmond.”

Hendricksen stared at me. In the other room, someone was sharpening a pencil.

“That’s not the name I saw in the paper,” he said, finally.

“No, he changed his name, because of what happened here fifteen years ago. I don’t think my client killed him,” I said. “I think someone else did. I think he was killed by the boys he molested.”

“If it was them,” he said, “it served him right.”

“Maybe so,” I replied, “that’s not for me to say. I’m just interested in clearing Paul Windsor. If you’ll help me informally I can be discreet, but if I have to start subpoenaing records and witnesses, people could be hurt all over again.”

After a moment’s thought, his face formed a decision. Slowly, he picked up the phone, pushed a button and spoke. “Get me a 1973 yearbook.” Phone still in hand, he asked, “You want some coffee, Mr. Rios? We might be here awhile.”

“Yes, thank you.”

He pushed another button and said, “Mary, bring me a pot of coffee and two cups. Cream, sugar. Any cookies left from lunch? Bring those too.”

A few minutes later, a cafeteria worker brought in a tray with a pot of coffee, a couple of mugs and a plate of thick brown cookies.

“Help yourself,” Hendricksen said.

I poured a cup of coffee and picked up a cookie. “These bring back memories,” I said. I bit into it and nearly choked.

Hendricksen grinned. “It helps if you dip ’em,” he said, demonstrating.