Inadvertent Disclosure (9 page)

CHAPTER 12

Friday afternoon

Clear Brook County Courthouse

Harry stood at his window.
Usually he liked to watch the shoppers and errand runners traipsing across the
square. When school let out, he watched the children skip and squeal and laugh
their way home. But, today, he looked out toward the rolling hills in the
distance, covered with trees still bare from the winter.

In a few months, they’d be
verdant and full of life. And in several months more, they’d be a fiery display
of gold and red. Those mountains, massive and far off, were in
his
county. Just as the streams, creeks, and lakes cutting through the mountains
were. They were his responsibility as much as the men and women, the business
owners, and the careless drivers. As much as the children, and the uninsured,
the abused, and the abusers.

This was his county and he was
its judge.

What was he going to do?  How
could he fairly decide this growing mountain of cases brought by and against
the oil and gas companies?  All the ancillary cases that somehow, some way,
managed to relate to hydrofracking?

Forget legal precedent, he
thought. What kind of moral precedent would he be setting?

Come off it, Harry. Your job,
your duty, is to follow legal precedent. Do your job and the rest will sort
itself out. It had to.

He didn’t know how much longer
he could ignore the phone calls. The visits. The looking up from his newspaper
in his booth at Bob’s to see an uninvited guest in the booth across from him,
smiling too wide.

His imagination was working
overtime. He’d begun to think he was being followed. As if there was any need
to follow him. He went to work, Bob’s, work, home. On Saturdays, he hiked
around Patterson’s Lake. Sundays, he went to church. A person could set his
watch by it.

He turned from the window and
walked to his desk. His hand hovered over his phone. He should call his son. He
hadn’t spoken to Shane in over a month. He was somewhere in the Middle East,
deployed for yet another six months. He’d want to hear from his father; after
all, that was why Harry had given him that fancy GPS satellite phone.

No. He should do what he was
supposed to be doing. Methodically work through the printouts of the draft
opinions he’d dictated and make the corrections so Gloria could finalize them
on Monday. After all, that was what he did on Fridays.

CHAPTER 13

Springport, Pennsylvania

The following Monday

Exactly one week after she’d
left the Springport municipal parking lot, Sasha eased her Passat in to a spot
in the lot. This time, however, out of prudence, she parked right next to the
attendant’s shack. Despite the unusually sunny April day, Danny Trees and his
friends were nowhere to be seen. Instead, a tired-eyed mother rested on the
bench in the adjacent park and watched her toddler chase a yellow rubber ball
around the grass at what appeared to be warp speed.

Sasha smiled at them as she
lifted her briefcase from the front seat. Inside, a copy of Dr. Kayser’s report
from his visit with Jed last week rested in a manila folder. As far as she was
concerned it should have been wrapped in Christmas paper. The gerontologist had
evidently caught her client on a good day. Jed had scored 29 out of 30 on his
MMSE, had shown the doctor around his place, and had taught him how to de-bone
a trout. The doctor had agreed to testify on Jed’s behalf.

Now, all she had to do was work
with Jed on his own testimony. He still had a tendency to curse a blue streak
and she was determined to get him to tone it down before the hearing. She
figured she might be able to bribe some good behavior out of him with a pie
from Bob’s Diner. She’d seen him looking at them longingly as they’d passed the
glass case on their way out.

As she walked from the lot to
the square, she found herself daydreaming about Deputy Russell’s coffee with
equal longing. So, when she ducked into Bob’s, she had Marie wrap up a gob for
Russell along with the pecan pie—authoritatively identified as Jed’s favorite
by the waitress.

“You enjoy that gob now, honey.
Diner’s closing Saturday. When it reopens, who knows what kind of frou frou desserts
we’ll be serving,” she called to Sasha’s back.

As she cut across the square in
the middle of the block, the late afternoon sun was in her eyes. She almost ran
into a tall, thin man. She sidestepped at the last minute to avoid him,
shielding her face from the glare with one hand and holding the pastries with
the other.

“Excuse me,” she muttered.

“Good afternoon, Ms.
McCandless,” he said. “I see you’ve discovered the desserts at Bob’s. Lydia
makes them from scratch.”

She squinted. It was Judge
Paulson.

“Hi, your honor. I didn’t know
that. Is Lydia his wife?”

“She is indeed,” the judge
said, taking Sasha’s elbow lightly in his hand and moving her backward and onto
the sidewalk as an oversized Ford pickup roared past. “It’s not advisable to
jaywalk around here, Counselor. Pedestrians may have the right of way in
downtown Pittsburgh, but you’re a long way from Pittsburgh.”

“I’ve noticed, your honor.
Thanks for the hand.”

The judge released her elbow
and came around to stand beside her. “Yes,” he said, “Springport is a different
place entirely.”

He pointed across the square to
the clock tower on the courthouse. “Do you see the statue atop the clock
tower?”

Sasha looked hard at the statue
of a woman in flowing robes. She could make out the scales of justice held
aloft in her left hand and a double-edged sword in her right.

 “It’s Lady Justice, isn’t it?”

“Very good, Ms. McCandless.
But, did you know that sculpture of Lady Justice is one of only five in the
entire country that doesn’t depict her as blindfolded?”

“No, I can’t say I did.”

“Yes. The blindfold, of course,
represents blind justice and impartiality. But, the elder statesmen who
commissioned our statue seemed to think that justice in Clear Brook County has
its eyes wide open.”

He waited for her to say
something.

“Maybe that’s a good thing?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But, I
doubt it.” He touched the tip of his hat and continued on his way, headed
toward Bob’s and his own slice of Lydia’s home-baked goodness.

* * * * * * * * * *

Deputy Russell had been happy
to fill Sasha’s stainless steel travel mug with some of his robust coffee in
exchange for a gooey gob. He’d been somewhat less happy to report that he’d
made no progress on identifying Jay and that Danny Trees had neither seen nor
heard from the man.

Sasha savored the hot coffee as
she drove out of town toward Jed Craybill’s home. Tall trees, just starting to
bud, dotted the ribbon of highway between Springport and Firetown. Behind the
trees loomed even taller oil derricks. Through the closed car windows, she
heard the constant hum of the compressor stations bringing up the pressure of
the gas released from the shale into the gathering lines, so it could feed into
the large pipelines.

Twenty minutes outside town,
she pulled off the highway, turned right, and bounced along a partially paved
unmarked road. The car rose and fell, following the natural peaks and valleys
of the field.

Sasha held her mug out from her
body as coffee sloshed over the lip of the purportedly leak-proof lid. Steering
one-handed, she swerved to miss a large bird walking along the path.

She turned her head to get a
better look. It was some kind of waterfowl. A duck, maybe, or a goose. She
craned her neck but saw no water. Nothing but rows of long, wavy grass, still
bleached tan from the winter. Lonely green shoots peeked out here and there.

A weathered ranch-style house
came into view at the end of the lane. No other houses were in sight. Sasha
slowed the car as she neared the house and parked in front of the attached
carport, which listed slightly to the right, leaning into the house.

Jed stood near his front door.
He was holding a bag of bread. He sneezed loudly and pulled a handkerchief from
his pants pocket.

“Damn allergies.”

He nodded a greeting as she got
out of the car, pecan pie in hand.

“Hi, Jed. How are you this
afternoon?”

“Can’t complain,” he said, the
fact that he just had apparently lost on him. “Just got back from feeding the
ducks. That a pie from Bob’s?”

“Yes it is. Pecan. Marie tells
me it’s your favorite.”

“That’s right. Well, come on
in,” he said, turning toward the door.

He braced himself against the
door frame, jammed a key into the lock, and turned it fiercely. The door flew
open.

“It sticks,” he explained
unnecessarily.

Sasha followed him into a small
entryway. She wiped her feet on a colorful rag rug that sat just inside the
door and pulled the warped door shut behind her.

He shuffled through the living
room without stopping and went straight to the kitchen in the back of the
house. It was painted yellow. Red and white checked curtains framed the window
over the sink. The appliances were old and scratched but clean. A clock shaped
like an apple missing a bite hung over a square table shoehorned into the far
corner.

Dr. Kayser had described Jed’s
home as spare and worn, but tidy and clean. Looking around, Sasha concurred
with his assessment.

Jed stopped beside the
refrigerator and opened a rectangular metal box that sat on the counter. He
placed the loaf of bread inside and pulled the cover back down.

Sasha tried to recall the last
time she’d seen a breadbox and came up empty.

“Do you always feed the ducks?”
she asked.

Jed answered her without
turning around. “Lately. The creek runs through the yard out back.” He paused
and nodded toward the window. “But they won’t eat from that anymore.”

“Why not?”

He pulled two white dessert
plates, rimmed with blue, from the cabinet and took two forks from the
silverware drawer beneath it.

Then he turned around and said,
“I suspect they know it’s poisoned.”

“Poisoned?”

“Poisoned, polluted, what the
hell’s the difference? God knows what chemicals are running through that water
from all the fracking.”

He gestured with a pie cutter
at the window, making a jabbing motion in the air.

“You leased your mineral
rights?  A gas and oil company is fracking on your land?”  Sasha asked him.

Jed wheeled around. “Are you
out of your mind? I won’t let those bastards rape my land. Chased them off the
front lawn with my hatchet when they came sniffing around. That contaminated
water’s coming from upstream.”

The pie cutter clattered to the
counter. The old man’s face was red and his arms shook.

“Okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean
to upset you.”

Sasha walked over to him and
touched his arm. “Why don’t you sit down and I’ll dish us up some pie?”

He let her lead him to the
table and sat muttering while she cut two slices of pie.

They ate in silence for several
minutes. Sasha stared at the apple clock and tried to think of a topic that
wouldn’t set off the old man.

“You know they sued the county
commissioners?” he demanded out of the blue.

“Who sued the county
commissioners?”

He threw her a look of disgust.
“The oil and gas dirtbags. Who else?”

“What’s the basis of the
suit?” 

Jed snickered around a mouthful
of pie. “Those other dirtbags—the commissioners—are holding up the oil and gas
people who are so desperate to get their precious gas out. Take Heather Price.
She runs her husband’s trucking company. Heather opposed some of their permits.
Then, suddenly Big Sky has an exclusive contract with her company to truck out
the gas. Guess who gets their permits all of a sudden?  That sort of thing. I
guess the drillers figure since they’re scratching everyone’s back, they should
get a scratch once in a while, too. But, last month, at the meeting, the
commissioners accepted a petition from that McAllister kid and a bunch of
hunters and fishers to consider a ban on drilling. They didn’t vote to ban it,
mind you, they just voted to vote on it. The oil and gas people got their
panties in a twist and ran over to the courthouse to file some kinda petition
that the vote would be invalid if they held it. Seems like they’re right about
that. The commissioners shouldn’t be able to interfere with any business they
want. They’re worse than gangsters.”

“So, you’re anti-fracking and
anti-banning fracking?” 

Jed let out a genuine laugh.
“Marla used to say I’m anti-everybody and anti-everything. I suspect she was
right about that, except for this here pie.”

* * * * * * * * * *

Sasha left her misanthropic
client’s home feeling good about her case. She thought she’d made it clear to
Jed that he’d have to tone down the swearing and the anger some at his upcoming
hearing if he wanted to testify. Truth be told, though, she thought a little
righteous indignation would be fitting the circumstances. She’d just have to
keep him on a tight leash.

April in Pennsylvania is rarely
balmy, but the afternoon sun was warm enough that she cracked the windows and
let the air in as she drove back toward Springport. She even hummed along to
the radio, which seemed to be limited to country music at the moment. Country
singers told the best stories, she thought, as she listened to the Dixie Chicks
sing about a traveling soldier.

As she hummed, a name popped
into her head: Heather Price. The commissioner Jed had mentioned. She’d
encountered that name before. But where?  She searched her memory but before
she could make a connection, her cell phone rang. She glanced down at the
display. It was Connelly.

She turned down the volume on
the radio and activated the hands-free setup through the car. She hated the
delay that the Bluetooth caused but not as much as she would have hated running
over someone because she was on her phone.

“Hey.”

“Hi, beautiful. How’d your
meeting go with your new boyfriend?”

She laughed. “As well as could
be expected, I think. I just left. Should be back home by seven or so.”

“Excellent. Do you want fish
tacos or my Thai chicken and noodles for dinner?”

 “The chicken and noodles with
the peanut sauce?”

“That’s the one.”

It was too hard to pick, what
with the belly full of pie.

“Chef’s choice,” she told him.

He groaned, as she knew he
would. Connelly didn’t like it when she punted on the decision making.

“Listen,” she cut him off.
“Does the name Heather Price mean anything to you?”

There was a pause while he
considered it. “No. Should it?”

“I don’t know.”