The Secret Hour (11 page)

 
Bonnie barked once, and Kate turned to wave goodbye, but she doubted that John O’Rourke saw: His taillights were already blazing into the twisting allée of spruce trees, driving away from her as fast as he could go.

 
Judge Patrick O’Rourke had been retired for ten years, but still wore a shirt and tie every day. Even now, taking out the garbage, he was dressed as if he were about to go into court: starched broadcloth shirt, Yale club tie tied in a full Windsor knot, flannel slacks. Everyone in town—with four exceptions—called him “Judge” or “Your Honor”—and not only, he suspected, because of the iron hand with which he had ruled his court, but also for Leila’s sculpture that had graced his garden since his first days on the bench, of Lady Justice herself.

 
School was out for the day, and the bus stopped at the curb, discharging Maggie. She came flying up the driveway, a tropical storm in sneakers. Arms flying, book bag thumping on her back, she reminded the Judge of her father at that age: filled with purpose and enthusiasm. Dropping the plastic bag into the trash, the Judge opened his arms to hug his granddaughter.

 
“How’s my girl?” he asked.

 
“Good, Gramps. What’re you doing?”

 
“Just taking out the trash.”

 
“Why isn’t Maeve doing that?”

 
“Well,” he said, trying to come up with a good lie. “She fixed you a nice after-school snack, and she was in there washing up the dishes. Couldn’t have her doing everything, right?”

 
Maggie shook her head, looking worried. “We’re a lot of extra work, aren’t we?”

 
“You and Teddy?” Justice asked, snorting. He pitched in, taking care of the kids after school when John was working too hard and the latest baby-sitter had quit. The whole family had moved in temporarily—as they had done before—and the Judge was happier than a clam at high tide. “You’re not a bit of work.”

 
“Really?” she asked, worried.

 
“One thing you can always count on, Margaret Rose,” he said. “That’s me telling the truth about things that matter. Now, what’ve you got in your book bag—rocks?”

 
“No, Gramps.” She giggled. “Books.”

 
“Well, they must make ’em extra heavy these days,” he said, helping her hoist the heavy knapsack.

 
“No, I just have a lot of homework. I missed school yesterday because of what happened. The brick coming through our window and hitting Dad…” she trailed off, an embarrassed look on her face as if the attack had been her fault.

 
“Damned hooligans,” he said. “Driving around, making trouble. Let’s just hope our fine policemen catch them.”

 
“They won’t,” Maggie said. “They didn’t leave any clues.”

 
The Judge had been on the business end of many threats in his day, but to subject his beloved granddaughter to it: That was too much. Good thing the family was here, away from danger. He was just gearing up to reassure Maggie, tell her everything would be okay and she shouldn’t worry about her dad, when she ran ahead of him—into the kitchen.

 
Maeve had set the plate of brownies out on the counter. Maggie went straight for the milk. She poured a glass, then helped herself to a brownie. The Judge hoped she wouldn’t notice the dirty bowl and pan piled in the sink and know he’d lied about Maeve.

 
“We almost had a good one, Gramps,” Maggie said, sitting at the kitchen table.

 
“A good what?”

 
“A good baby-sitter. One we liked.”

 
“Really? What happened?” the Judge said, sitting in his place at the table, getting ready to pump his granddaughter for information. Life was circular; as a young man, the Judge had often been too busy to talk to his son. Now Johnny was too busy to tell his father what was going on.

 
“Well, Dad didn’t like her. Or, maybe he did, but he didn’t appreciate her taking me in the car without asking. Only, Gramps—how was she supposed to ask, when Dad was at the hospital getting stitches? All she wanted to do was help.”

 
“Help how?”

 
“By running Brainer through the car wash. It was…” Closing her eyes, chomping on her brownie, Maggie sought the perfect word. “Magical,” she finished.

 
“Magical,” the Judge scoffed. “That mangy old hound in a
car wash
?”

 
“Yeah. Kate—that’s her name—said all animals thrive on showers. She said that where she comes from, the ponies take baths in the sea, dogs go swimming in the creek—anything for a shower. She said it’s true for people, too. That water makes us feel better. And you know what, Gramps?”

 
“What?” the Judge asked, reaching over to wipe the chocolate crumbs off her mouth.

 
“It does make people feel better. Me, anyway. I gave myself a bath and a shampoo after she left last night, and I’m gonna give myself another one tonight.”

 
The Judge narrowed his eyes. Was John crazy? The new baby-sitter had washed the dog, gotten
Maggie into the bath
on her own, and he was grousing about technicalities? Although the Judge knew that people—especially parents—couldn’t be too careful, he also understood the difficulties of John’s life. Good help was hard to find, and unfortunately, both O’Rourke men needed it.

 
Take Maeve.

 
That morning she had gone out to the garden for a heart-to-heart talk with her sister Brigid—and Brigid had been dead for the last fifteen years. Sometimes Maeve talked to her children, too—only she’d never been married, never, to the Judge’s knowledge, had any progeny. She even had names for them: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

 
The practice alarmed the Judge. Not only because his housekeeper was on the fast track for losing her marbles, but because occasionally—not as often as Maeve, but often enough—he found himself doing similar things.

 
Twice he’d found himself sitting at his desk, delivering instructions to the jury—only there was no jury. Last week, in the middle of the night, he’d opened his eyes and discovered himself standing in the middle of his bedroom wearing, not his tattered plaid bathrobe, but the judicial robe he had worn on the bench for so many years. As if, by letting him put it on, his subconscious was restoring to him a bit of the dignity and self-respect he felt slipping away by inches.

 
Same thing for Maeve. A great cook for the twenty years she’d served him, she still went to the kitchen, assembled all the copper and stainless steel pans, and whipped up batches of deliriously seasoned water. People, even in their dotage, gravitated toward what they had always loved, practices that had always told them who they were.

 
“Where’s Daddy?” Maggie asked, refilling her glass of milk. “At his office?”

 
“I think he said something about a meeting out of town,” the Judge said.

 
“Out of town?” Maggie asked, freezing in place.

 
The Judge bit his lip, wishing he could lie, say he’d made a mistake. He would, too. Certain lies were useful; he didn’t hold by the standard of full disclosure for parents or grandparents. White lies had been critical to his tenure in those roles. Nowadays, parents got all hung up on “openness.” Forget that: Keep the children comfortable so they could focus on scholastic excellence and leave the worrying to their elders.

 
“Gramps?” Maggie pressed, squeezing her second brownie so hard, it crumbled in her fingers. “He’s out of town?”

 
The Judge took a deep breath. What was it about this that panicked her? The idea of her father getting killed on the road, like her mother? Or was she bothered, as John had been at her age, by her defense attorney father’s going behind the heavy, reinforced, unyielding steel doors of a maximum-security prison to visit his clients?

 
“What’s in that book bag, young lady?” the Judge asked sternly. “Time to get started on all that homework, if you want to go to Yale. Yale doesn’t take just anyone, you know. You must do the time, if you want to wear the blue. Not to mention Georgetown law; Yale for undergrad, Georgetown for law school. You’ve got quite a heritage to live up to.”

 
“Gramps, tell me!” Maggie wailed, a veil of despair over her eyes, her face twisted in a painful knot. The Judge had seen this before. She was about ten seconds away from fretting herself into a full-blown tearfest. Having seen John deal with this, paradoxically, by delivering the hard truth—whatever it was—the Judge went against his own best judgment and decided to lay the cards on the table.

 
“He went up to the prison,” the Judge said. “To visit Merrill.”

 
Maggie nodded, the knot relaxing almost instantly—to the Judge’s surprise.

 
“That’s okay with you?” he asked.

 
Maggie shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I get worried when he drives, and I know that Merrill’s a bad man, but I like to know where Daddy is. No matter what.”

 
“Hmmm,” the Judge said, reflecting. “When your father was young, before I became a judge, I was a defense lawyer like your father. Don’t tell him I told you, but he used to get all in a swivet whenever I’d go to the prison. I think he was afraid those big doors would close behind me, and I’d be locked inside with all those murderers.”

 
“Dad explains it to me,” Maggie said, eating her brownie. “So I don’t have to think bad things. He could never get locked inside, because the guards are watching out for him all the time. And Merrill gets searched, so he can’t carry a weapon to hurt Dad.”

 
“What a smart father you have. He must have learned from my mistakes.”

 
“How come you went from being a lawyer to being a judge?” Maggie asked.

 
“Because of my stellar courtroom performance and brilliant legal mind.”

 
“When you’re a judge, you don’t have to visit criminals in jail anymore, right?”

 
“Right. In fact, you’d be booted off the bench if you did.”

 
“Huh,” Maggie said, chewing thoughtfully.

 
The Judge sat back, watching her. His granddaughter had such a thoughtful face, intelligent eyes. She might make a fine jurist someday. Teddy, too. But he hoped they would choose corporate law or estate planning.

 
The Judge thought of Greg Merrill. That baby-faced, soft-voiced, unassuming, college-educated serial killer. What he had done to those girls made him a monster—he defied any other definition.

 
Johnny was with him now. The Judge looked at his gold watch: at this very moment, as time ticked by. Why, after a lifetime of trying cases involving violent crimes, should the Judge be made uneasy by the thought?

 
His gaze falling upon his granddaughter’s innocent face, the Judge tried to smile. How many violent men had he and her father, over the years and with the full weight and imprimatur of the law behind them, released into society? Hundreds?

 
Thousands?

 
The Judge sighed. The truth was—in spite of this sunny child, this vision of goodness sitting beside him with brownie crumbs dotting her lips—he knew that a fair trial was their right.

 
Problem was, the Judge had lost his stomach for the whole thing. A passionate liberal in his youth, he had—in the lingo of Teddy—shape-shifted into a conservative jurist. He had one hundred percent supported Judge Miles Adams, the judge selected to preside over the long, emotional sentencing hearing that sent Gregory Bernard Merrill to the Death House.

 
“It’s because of you,” he said out loud. Staring at Maggie, her blue eyes so reminiscent of her ravishing mother’s, the Judge knew that the kids were the reason for his conversion to a more conservative way of thought. What’s a conservative but a liberal who’s had grandchildren?

 
“What, Gramps?”

 
“Hmm?” he asked, still watching her face.

 
“You said ‘it’s because of you.’ What’s because of me?”

 
The Judge felt himself blush. He’d been caught having a Maeve moment. Talking out loud, instead of keeping his thoughts to himself. Get himself in trouble, that way.

 
“Nothing, my sweet girl. Just enjoy your brownie.”

 
“You said Maeve was doing the dishes,” Maggie said, her cool gaze flicking to the overflowing sink. “But she must have been too tired to finish.”

 
“Looks like you’re right.”

 
“I’ll help her,” Maggie said, lifting her glass and plate off the table, starting to run the water. “Washing is good…all that warm water flowing, sending everything bad away, down the drain. Kate told me.”