Interest of Justice Read online

  Everyone else might go on coffee breaks during these recesses, but most of the judges worked. They pored over briefs, motions, read probation reports, returned phone calls, conferred with attorneys. If they were fast, they could go to the bathroom. She looked around her paneled office at the bookcases crammed with law books. Even though they had as yet to replace her chair, the office itself had been recently redecorated and was actually nicer than her home in many ways, with new mauve carpeting, two studded leather chairs facing her desk, a conference table off to the side in one corner where she sometimes worked when she was in the midst of a big trial. She had to rely on artificial light since there were no windows. She hated overheads and glare. On her desk were two matching lamps with green lucite shades that she had purchased herself. They gave the room a different look, an almost surreal atmosphere, casting shadows in the corners and across the faces of those who sat in front of her. Instead of looking like an office, it looked like a study or library in a stately home.

  She opened the enormous file on her desk and then closed it. She was preparing herself for a trial that she would begin next Monday, but before she did anything, she had to pay her bills. She took out her checkbook and thought about the Adams case. It was another thorn in the side of the criminal justice system. As a senior district attorney, she had handled only the most serious cases. She really preferred it that way. When things didn’t go right, however, as a D.A., there were a lot of whipping boys. Sometimes she’d cursed the judge. Now she was the judge.

  The only person she had to vent her frustrations on was Leo Evergreen. He assigned all the cases. He was, in effect, her boss. But the man was the essence of professional perfection, his judgment impeccable, his knowledge seemingly endless. Getting angry and shaking her fist at Leo Evergreen was seldom justified. Most of his case assignments were well thought out and fair. If he advised her on something, his advice was solid and almost always on the money.

  In actuality, Leo Evergreen was one of the most intelligent men Lara had ever known. His long-term management of the Orange county superior court had earned it the lowest percentile of judicial error in the state. The higher courts thought he was a god. He could have easily won a position on the appellate court, or any other higher court, for that matter, yet he preferred to remain here. From what she could tell, he was firmly rooted in his little domain, a creature of habit. He had also told Lara one day that he would never move from Orange County. He considered it one of the most beautiful places to live in the world. In many ways Lara agreed with him. There was nothing like it.

  Orange County was south of the Los Angeles city limits. The courthouse was located on Civic Center Drive in Santa Ana, not far from Anaheim and Disneyland, the crest of the county. Once into Irvine, Newport, Laguna Beach, or Mission Viejo, the population was made up of WASPs and yuppies, wall-to-wall BMWs and those little Mercedes Benzes, the ones for baby professionals who wanted to show everyone they were on their way to the big time.

  Past Mission Viejo was the quaint fishing village of Dana Point, right on the ocean with a lovely marina; farther south were San Juan Capistrano and San Clemente, authentically Spanish. San Juan Capistrano was where the swallows returned each year to the mission. A few years ago, they hadn’t returned. Lara thought the swallows knew what all the people building huge homes there didn’t realize: Los Angeles was sprawling outward, the crime following.

  Miles of uncluttered beaches stretched beneath towering glass and metal structures housing high-tech companies. Orange County was only an hour drive by freeway to Los Angeles, but the air was cooler and cleaner here, the breezes full of the salty scent of the sea. Crime, street gangs, and crack were escalating in Santa Ana, Anaheim, and Costa Mesa, but elsewhere criminal activity was still moderate. People wore shorts and polo shirts and drove convertibles. This was California suburbia at its best.

  Even though Lara was in chambers, she was still wearing her robe. She liked her black robe. It was a symbol of justice. When she slipped it over her clothes every morning, usually a simple white shirt and black skirt, she felt the weight of it, the yoke of responsibility she’d undertaken. She wasn’t in this position for the money or the status. The satisfaction, the sense of accomplishment, the feeling that she was making a valuable and necessary contribution to society, were her motivations. She was idealistic, stubborn, compulsive. Some people thought she was a fool, clinging to values that no longer existed, seeking reasonable and fair solutions in an unreasonable and cruel environment.

  They were probably right.

  She slapped the stack of bills on top of the mounds of paper already covering the top of her desk, and started adding the columns of figures in her checkbook on an electronic calculator. Her salary was ninety-nine thousand per annum. In the beginning it had seemed like a fortune, but with taxes, retirement, insurance, it wasn’t really that much. Most families relied on dual incomes while Lara was solo. And this was also Southern California, where the cost of living was particularly high. A decent house could run as high as three hundred thousand for something that would sell in the Midwest for eighty or ninety, and of course, in L.A. everyone drove a nice car, even if they lived in a shack. It was hard to plead poverty when making a hundred grand a year, but Lara’s standard of living was far from the lap of luxury. Besides, she had always been a civil service employee. Most of the other judges who lived in spacious houses in the best of neighborhoods and had second homes in Palm Springs had left thriving private practices and amassed fat nest eggs before they took to the bench. Lara had been saddled with student loans from college and law school that she’d only satisfied a few years before. Her parents had been simple people. She had paid for her own education.

  Thumbing through her checkbook, she saw all the checks made out to Ivory over the past two years and winced. She could kiss the savings account goodbye, she thought. No need for an IRA this year. She had also counted on the payments Sam had contracted to make on the loan she’d made for him to buy the pawnshop. She’d never see that money again.

  A thought suddenly crossed her mind, and she punched numbers into the phone with her pen, getting Judge Evergreen’s secretary. “Is he in, Louise? This is Lara Sanderstone.”

  “Yes, just a moment, Judge Sanderstone.”

  “Lara,” an older male voice said, “I was just thinking about you. Why don’t you come down?”

  “Uh, Leo, I just wanted to call and see how you were feeling,” she said in soft tones. “I heard you were out last week with the flu.”

  “Well, that’s very nice of you to think of me,” he said. “I’m feeling much better, actually. Come to my chambers and we’ll talk.”

  Before she had a chance to tell him that she was due back in court in less than ten minutes, he was gone. She grabbed a handful of case files for the afternoon session and rushed out of the office.

  “Here,” Phillip said, “give me those and I’ll take them down in the cart with the others.”

  “No,” she told him. “I’ve got to review them.” Juggling the cumbersome files in her arms, she opened one and began reading as she walked.

  Although D.A.‘s, public defenders, and clerks roamed around in these halls behind the courts, no one else was allowed back here and the area was sealed off with closed-circuit television monitors and manned security behind locked doors. Too many times defendants went crazy and came looking for judges with a loaded gun. Still walking and reading, she glanced up and saw the placard on the door and stepped inside. Evergreen’s secretary nodded and she entered his chambers.

  At sixty-seven, Evergreen was well preserved. He evidently worked at it. His hair was dyed. What color he had wanted it to be really didn’t matter, because it had turned out a funny artificial shade of red. It was almost blood red, but not new blood. More like old blood that tends to darken. His face was soft and fleshy. Never was there even a hint of a beard. In some places his skin had a sheen to it as though he lathered it each morning with expensive wrinkle creams.


  His lips were full and his eyes small and wide-set, a watery gray. Behind those eyes was a great legal mind, a mind Lara coveted.

  “How do you stand on the Adams matter?” Evergreen said. He didn’t stand but swiveled his high-backed leather chair to face her. ‘This is an important case, Lara. There’s been a lot of press.”

  “Press,” she said. “I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.” She didn’t want to get into a discussion of the tabloid article even though she was certain Evergreen had heard of it. “No one’s requested a continuance yet. It should go off as planned.” A tremendous amount of coordination and organization went into Evergreen’s position as presiding judge. This required real finesse, for attorneys were known for delays, and delays clogged down the system like wads of toilet paper in a toilet.

  Glancing at her watch, she knew she had to be back in court any minute. “I’m preparing now. I thought I might review it with you before we open next week. When’s a good time?”

  They settled on a day and time, and Lara started to leave when Leo began speaking again. “There’s a case on your calendar this afternoon. Hold on a moment,” he said, moving a few papers around on his desk while she waited, making sure they were all perfectly aligned in a neat little stack in one corner.

  Unlike Lara’s desk, Evergreen’s was so neat she could actually see the polished surface. He was a perfectionist, and every item on his desk had a designated place. According to Phillip, he didn’t allow his secretary to touch it. He even dusted and polished it himself.

  Evergreen was speaking, “Let me confirm the name. Here it is: Packard Cummings. The charge is possession of a concealed weapon.”

  “Yes,” Lara said, wondering if old Packard had been conceived in the backseat of a car. With a name like that, he had to have been. She’d seen the file on her walk down but hadn’t as yet reviewed it.

  Leo continued in that monotone of his, so low she had to strain to hear him. He did that on purpose. He wanted her to work, have to listen closely. “We’ve been contacted by a local law enforcement agency about this individual. They informed us this man’s been working for them as a confidential informant on a very large narcotics case. They alluded that this might be the reason he was armed. If I’m not mistaken, he’s appearing on a bail review. As a courtesy, they’ve asked that we release him on his own recognizance.”

  “Just a minute, Leo. I have his file right here.” She juggled the files in her arms, setting the others on the floor and dropping to a chair. Flipping through the top sheets to the computer printout of the man’s criminal record, she quickly scanned it and looked up. “My God, Leo, this man has a five-page rap sheet of extremely serious offenses. He’s been sentenced twice for rape, was suspected of stabbing another inmate at Chino, and he’s even on parole. The district attorney’s made a note right in the file that they intend to prosecute him as a career criminal. He’s a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.” This was a white-supremacist prison gang, basically neo-Nazis, extremely violent. “We can’t release him O.R. even if he’s working for the CIA.”

  Evergreen was silent. His mouth fell open and he breathed heavily, something he did often when he was thinking. Finally he said, the words barely distinguishable, “Well, of course, that’s your decision, but we always try to cooperate with law enforcement.”

  Lara bit a corner of her lip, sucking it right into her mouth and sinking her teeth into it. One of the reasons she had fought for this appointment was to make independent rulings, decisions she felt were fair and just, but that kept men like this one off the streets. She started to speak up, but visions of another stint in the zoo should the Adams matter be continued flashed in her mind. “Fine,” she said, pushing the words out of her mouth. “I’ll grant him O.R.”

  “Very good, then,” he said, his mind shifting to something else right before her eyes. “You handled yourself quite well with that Henderson matter, Lara. How is the prosecution’s case developing?”

  “Not good, Leo. Not good at all. But I’ll keep you posted.”

  Lara snatched the files off the floor and headed down the corridor. As to the man he wanted released O.R., Lara thought she had probably overreacted. She was a diehard. The man’s parole agent should put a hold on him anyway, so the issue of bail would be redundant.

  She wasn’t looking where she was going and ran right into Phillip on his way to the court. The files fell from her arms and scattered all over the carpeted hallway.

  “I’m sorry,” Lara said, looking at the mess she’d made and glancing at her watch. She bent down and picked up a few papers and tossed them into the cart. For a few moments, her eyes searched Phillip’s face. Dark circles were etched under his soft eyes, and he seemed unusually tense. She noted a slight tremor in his hand as he picked up the remaining file off the floor. “Are you feeling all right, Phillip?” she asked, wondering if he was coming down with the flu.

  “Oh,” he said, standing. “No, I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

  For the past two years Lara had made every attempt to get to know this young man, but she had as yet to break the ice. “I just thought…I mean, you look tired.”

  “Law school,” he said, looking away, clearing his throat. “It’s not easy when you have a full-time job.”

  “Hang in there,” she said, giving him a warm smile.

  Following him down the hall, Lara unclipped the bow at the base of her neck and pulled the unruly strands back before she snapped it into place again. What she had to do was get on Leo’s A-list, become part of the inner circle of judges that ruled the county. Irene had made the team years ago. She and Evergreen were close friends, but Lara was still on the outside. Then, she thought, she could make any kind of rulings she wanted.

  “Get me a fucking beer,” Sam Perkins yelled from the living room, “and put up my TV dinner.”

  “Get your own beer,” Josh yelled back from the kitchen, his own dinner already in the oven. “What do you think I am, your slave?”

  “You little punk. You’re nothing but a skinny little punk. Get me that beer and fix my fucking supper, boy, or I’ll beat the ever living daylights outa you.”

  “Go ahead,” Josh said, just as his stepfather rose from the big easy chair in front of the television and headed in his direction, his face a mask of drunken rage. “Hit me. Go ahead.”

  His stepfather met his challenge and punched him right in the face with his fist. Then he pulled back and punched him several more times, connecting with his cheek, his forehead, the strength of his blows almost knocking the boy out of the chair. Suddenly he stopped and looked at Josh. He knew just how far he could go. He didn’t want the school reporting Josh’s injuries to the authorities. He had other ways to punish him. Ways that didn’t show.

  He forced Josh to sit at the table and eat the TV dinner he’d made for himself. “Since you’re such a hot shot, too good to make your dad something to eat, I want you to eat the whole thing, even the fucking tray. Eat it,” he demanded. “Now!”

  “Don’t you ever say you’re my dad,” Josh blurted out, blood trickling from his nose where Sam had slugged him. “My dad’s dead and you’re nothing. You’re a bum, a loser, a pervert.”

  “Eat it,” Sam said, laughing. He reached over and grabbed Josh’s hair and shoved his face into the TV dinner. “Eat the foil, the tray, the whole damn thing, you wise-ass puny punk.”

  Josh’s entire body was shaking with anger and humiliation, his face smeared with mashed potatoes and gravy. “I can’t eat the foil. It’ll kill me if I eat it. Please, Sam, I’m sorry.”

  “You ain’t sorry. You’re nothing but a spoiled pussy boy, a momma’s boy.” He leaned over and yelled at the top of his lungs. “Eat that fucking foil. You ain’t getting up from that table until there’s nothing left of that dinner.”

  Josh ate it.

  He ripped the foil into small pieces and began swallowing them along with chunks of the food, tears streaming down his cheeks. He would run away…never come back
. He missed his father. Since his mother had married Sam Perkins, their life had become a nightmare of humiliation so awful that he wouldn’t even tell his closest friends.

  Sam had returned to the chair in the living room. He yelled back at Josh, “If I come in there and see one speck of foil, I’ll put your fucking little pecker in the garbage disposal.”

  Josh tore off another piece and ate it, listening to Sam’s laughter from the other room. With his eyes glued on Sam’s back, he grabbed what was left of the foil tray and shoved it under the waistband of his jeans to dispose of later. This was his home, had always been his home for as long as he could remember. If he ran away, where would he go, how could he survive? Before his father died, the house had been filled with laughter and the wonderful aromas of his mother’s home-cooked meals. But in the past two years she’d almost completely stopped cooking, and she’d certainly stopped cleaning. Now the house was a pigsty. Beer cans and newspapers were thrown everywhere. Dishes were piled in the sink. Every night his mother went out, always telling Josh some stupid story about a club meeting, spending time with a sick friend. Tonight she’d told him she was going to the PTA meeting at his school. It was Tuesday night. Josh knew the PTA meeting wasn’t until next Wednesday and his mother had never gone to one in her life.

  Night after night she would leave him there, alone in the house with Sam, with nothing to eat but TV dinners. She thought he didn’t know what was going on, thought he was still a dumb little kid. But she was wrong.

  He knew everything.

  Chapter 4