The Undertaker's Widow (32 page)

Quinn was washing the breakfast dishes when the doorbell rang. Laura looked up from the paper when her husband walked to the door. Quinn peered through the peephole. Lou Anthony and Leroy Dennis were standing on the welcome mat.

“Good morning, Judge,” Dennis said. “May we come in?”

“What's this about?” Quinn asked warily.

Dennis glanced at Laura. He looked uncomfortable.

“Maybe we should talk in private, Judge.”

“I have nothing to hide from my wife.”

Dennis hesitated. “Some of the questions we're going to ask … The subjects are delicate.”

“I repeat. I have nothing to hide from my wife.”

Quinn led the detectives into the living room.

“What do you want to know?” he asked when they were all seated.

“Denise Ritter called me this morning and told me about your trip to Seattle,” Anthony said. “What were you doing up there?”

“She called me. She said that she wanted to talk to me about her sister.”

“So you hop a jet and fly to Seattle?”

Quinn did not respond.

“Why didn't you tell me that Andrea Chapman and Claire Reston were the same person when we were at the crime scene?”

“I only suspected that the two women were the same when I saw the dead woman at the hotel. I wasn't certain. I was pretty upset.”

“I remember,” Dennis said, “and I can't believe that you want the person who tortured Marie Ritter to death to get away with it.”

“I don't.”

“That's not the way you're acting,” Dennis said.

“We think that you have information that will help us identify Marie Ritter's killer,” Anthony told Quinn.

“We're counting on your decency, Judge,” Dennis said. “We're counting on you coming through for us.”

“What is this information that you believe I have?”

“I'm gonna put my cards on the table,” Anthony told Quinn. “We have evidence that points to a suspect other than Senator Crease. You know who I'm talking about. Denise Ritter told you that her sister had a customer from Oregon who was an undertaker. If Lamar Hoyt, Jr., is the customer, he becomes suspect number one.

“Now we come to you, Judge. I've been on the losing side of motions before. Hell, everyone screws up. But no judge has ever accused me of intentionally lying under oath. When I calmed down I asked myself why you did what you did. It was a mystery, until we found
those pictures of you and Ritter. Then everything fell into place.”

“Lou and I are certain that you were blackmailed to fix Ellen Crease's case,” Dennis said, feeling vindicated by the swift shift of emotions on Quinn's face. “What we need to know is whether the blackmailer wanted you to acquit Crease or convict her. We figure that Junior would have asked you to make certain that Crease was convicted. If Senator Crease was blackmailing you, she would want you to fix the case so that she couldn't be convicted.”

“So there it is, Judge,” Anthony told Quinn. “If you tell us that the blackmailer wanted you to convict Ellen Crease, we'll concentrate on Lamar Hoyt, Jr. If you tell us that you were ordered to acquit Crease, we'll go to the D.A. with that.”

“And you'll ask Cedric Riker to move to set aside Dick's order on the grounds that it was obtained by fraud,” Laura told Anthony.

“Yes, ma'am,” he answered without hesitation. “We'd have to.”

“That would expose my husband to disbarment, criminal charges and disgrace.”

“There is no way around that.”

“Of course,” Dennis said quickly, “we could work out something with the criminal charges.”

“Like the Eugene Police did with Frederick Gideon?” Laura said.

Dennis blinked.

“Detectives,” Laura said, “my husband won't answer any more of your questions without consulting an attorney.”

Dennis and Anthony sagged.

“Laura,” Quinn started.

“Listen to me on this, Dick.”

Quinn wanted to talk to the detectives, but he realized that Laura was right.

“I appreciate the way you've handled this case and the consideration you've shown me,” Quinn told the detectives. “I'm not ruling out our talking further. But you know how serious a decision this is for me.”

“I know that, Judge,” Dennis agreed.

“Just give me some time to think.”

“Cedric Riker also suspects that you fixed Crease's hearing and he wants your blood. If Riker had his way, we'd be questioning you at the station with a rubber hose and klieg lights shining in your eyes. I'd rather trust your good instincts and have you cooperate because you know it's the right thing to do, but we can't wait very long for you to decide.”

“You see our position?” Dennis asked. “We have a very dangerous person running free. That person has murdered Marie Ritter and was responsible for the death of Lamar Hoyt. He also attacked you. Remember, Judge, you're the key witness here and the killer knows that. He tried to kill you once. You can bet he'll try again.”

Quinn thought about that. If he were attacked at home, Laura would be in danger.

“Before you go,” Quinn said, “there is something else I learned that might help you. Lamar Hoyt suspected that Junior was skimming from the mortuary business. That's why they argued at Hoyt Industries headquarters.”

“How do you know that?”

“Karen Fargo told me last night.”

Anthony colored. “Damn it, Judge, you are not one of the Hardy Boys. Stay the hell out of this investigation. You hear me?”

Laura showed the detectives to the door. Then she returned to the living room, where she found Quinn looking totally lost.

“What should I do?” he asked as soon as Laura sat beside him.

“If you admit to the police that you fixed Ellen Crease's case you can bank on being forced to resign from the bench and you face the additional threats of being disbarred and prosecuted criminally.”

“Maybe I don't deserve to stay on the bench. I covered up what I thought was a murder. I fixed a case.”

“You had good reasons for not going to the authorities on St. Jerome and you decided the motion to suppress the way you did to protect Ellen Crease.”

“I could have told the police about the blackmail threat, withdrawn from the case and let another judge take over.”

“Yes. You probably should have, but you didn't. We have to deal with what really happened. I guess the problem is that anything you do puts you in jeopardy. The ideal solution would be for the police to arrest the killer without your assistance.”

“Without my help they might never be able to do that.”

Anthony dropped off Leroy Dennis at the police station, then drove to Karen Fargo's house. He got along well with the witness and he had explained to Dennis that Fargo might be more comfortable speaking to him alone.

“I just came from talking to Judge Quinn,” Anthony said when they were seated at a table in Fargo's tiny kitchen. “He said he talked to you last night, and you told him why Lamar and his son quarreled.”

“It was okay to talk to him, wasn't it?” Fargo asked anxiously. “He's a judge.”

“Oh, sure. No, you did the right thing. I just
wanted to find out if there's anything else you remembered that you think is important.”

Fargo hesitated. Anthony thought that she seemed agitated.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“No, I …” Fargo could not meet Anthony's eye.

“Karen, if you know something that will help in this investigation, you've got to tell me. There have been three deaths already.”

“I never lied. Everything I said to you and the grand jury was true, but …”

“Yes?”

Fargo looked desperate.

“Is it illegal if I was paid to come to see you? Would I be breaking the law?”

“Someone paid you to come forward?”

Fargo told Anthony about the visit from the man with the scar.

“How much were you paid?” Anthony asked when Fargo was through.

“Five thousand dollars.”

“Did this man who visited you say who he was or who he was working for?”

“No, but I saw him again.”

“Where?”

“On the evening news.”

“Did the newscaster say his name?” Anthony asked excitedly.

“No. He was just someone in a news story, but …”

“Yes?”

“It was right after Judge Quinn suppressed the evidence. That's what the story was about. And this man, the one who came here, he looked like he was with Senator Gage.”

The courthouse was deserted when Quinn arrived. He went directly to his chambers and put up a pot of coffee. While the coffee perked, Quinn went into his office and surveyed the paperwork that was strewn across the top of his desk. Most of it was from the motions in the
Crease
case. Quinn went back into the anteroom and looked through the filing cabinet behind Fran Stuart's desk. By the time he had pulled the files in the other cases that had to be dealt with, the coffee was ready.

Quinn poured himself a mug and shut the door to his office. After tuning his radio to a classical music station, the judge began organizing the documents on his desk into piles so he could return them to the file in
State v. Crease
with some sense of order. Quinn put a rubber band around the police reports that he had examined when he was deciding Cedric Riker's motion to exclude evidence of Martin Jablonski's criminal record. He was about to put them in the accordion file where he kept all of the documents pertaining to the motion when he noticed something that was written on the top report. Quinn slipped the report out from under the rubber band and examined it. It was the arresting officer's account of a six-year-old home burglary committed by Jablonski. His conviction for this crime had sent him to the penitentiary until his release last year. As Quinn reread the report his heartbeat accelerated. He tried to calm down so he could figure out what his discovery meant. When he was certain of his reasoning, Quinn phoned Ellen Crease.

“Crease residence,” James Allen said.

“Mr. Allen, this is Judge Quinn. Is Senator Crease in?”

“Yes, sir.”

Allen put Quinn on hold. When the phone came
back to life, Ellen Crease was on the other end. Quinn told her about Junior's connection to Marie Ritter and what he had learned from Karen Fargo. Then Quinn explained his discovery of the police report and the conclusions he had drawn from it.

“My God,” Crease said when Quinn was finished. “This is so hard to believe.”

“But it makes sense.”

“Yes, it does.”

Crease sounded like she was in shock.

“What do you think we should do?” Quinn asked.

Crease thought for a moment.

“The courthouse is only a block from the Justice Center. Wait for me in your chambers. I'm coming down. We'll go to the police together.”

While Quinn waited for Crease, he organized his files. The busywork helped him take his mind off the terrible events of the past few days. Periodically, Quinn checked the time. He thought it would take Crease about half an hour to drive downtown. Quinn had placed the call to Crease a little after three and it was already three-thirty. Quinn expected the phone to ring at any moment.

At three-fifty, Quinn heard the door between the anteroom and the corridor open. Quinn walked to the door to his chambers. He reached for the doorknob, then stopped himself. A peephole had been installed for security purposes. Through it, Quinn saw the man who had attacked him in the garage quietly closing the door to the corridor. His face was still concealed behind a ski mask and he was carrying a large hunting knife.

Quinn locked his door just as the man reached for the knob. Quinn saw the knob turn slowly. He backed against the desk. There was a second door in his chambers that opened onto the bench. Quinn realized that he
could escape through it into the courtroom, then he could get out through the courtroom door.

Quinn started to leave when he remembered the gun that had been left on the hood of his car. It was in his desk drawer. He had meant to turn it over to the police, but he never had the chance. Quinn raced around the desk and got the gun. He had never fired one and had only a vague idea, picked up from television and the movies, of how to shoot it, but he felt better holding the weapon.

Quinn opened the door behind the bench as quietly as possible and slipped into the courtroom. He closed the door silently and crept down the stairs from the bench to the bar of the court, praying that the person in his anteroom would not think of his escape route.

Rain clouds had darkened the sky and very little light came through the courtroom windows. The weak light that illuminated the courthouse corridor seeped into the courtroom. The empty benches were cloaked in shadow. Quinn hurried to the door. It was locked, but he had the key. As he stepped into the corridor, the door to his chambers opened and he and his attacker were suddenly face-to-face.

Both men paused for a second. Then the man in the mask took a step toward Quinn. Quinn pointed his weapon down the corridor and fired. In the narrow confines of the marble hallway the gunshot roared like a cannon. Quinn's aim was terrible. The bullet ricocheted crazily as it bounced off the walls. The man ducked back into Quinn's chambers.

The courthouse was a square. The fifth floor consisted of four corridors built around an open center. At the front of the courthouse were the elevators and broad steps that led down to the front door. Quinn wanted to run down those stairs, but that would mean passing the door to his chambers, so he headed to the hall in the rear
of the courthouse. There, two enclosed staircases at either end of the hall went down to the back corridor on the first floor. If he could make it to the first floor, Quinn could run into a tiny alcove where he would find the elevator that went up to the courthouse jail. If he got that far, he could call for help through an intercom on the wall of the alcove. Armed corrections deputies would be moments away.