“Not much passes through here I don’t know about,” Pike reiterated. “Civil and criminal.”
“Well, since you offered. I’m interested in a lawsuit filed by a contractor.” Sloane opened a folder and pretended to search for the name. “Tom Goode Construction. He sued the county over the build-out of the Fresh Start facility.”
“That’s right. What’s your interest in that case?”
“You’re familiar with it?”
“Some.”
“I read an article in the archives that Goode sued the county for cost overruns and received one point five million dollars, I believe.”
“I don’t recall the dollar amount,” Pike said.
“I’m looking for the city attorney’s motion to disqualify Judge Boykin.”
The arrow hit its mark. Pike flinched. “Why, why would the city attorney have sought to disqualify Judge Boykin?”
“So it was Judge Boykin who tried that case? The article didn’t say.”
Pike pinched his lips.
“Tom Goode Construction was the contractor on the remodel of the judge’s home.” Sloane had started his morning at the Winchester County Building Department.
Pike smiled but disbelief crept into his voice. “Remodel? The judge’s house?”
“Goode’s name is on the set of construction drawings at the building department. I didn’t see any permits actually pulled for that work, though. Did the judge have his home remodeled?”
Pike shaded red. “I really wouldn’t know.”
“No? Small town and all?”
“He may have. I think he started the process. I don’t know.”
“Well, I would think that would be a conflict, wouldn’t you?”
“Unless the city attorney didn’t see it that way, as a conflict I mean; he might not have. Judge Boykin knows a lot of people. If he was challenged each time he knew a party or witness he’d be sitting on the sidelines more than on the bench.”
“But he wasn’t on the sidelines for the lawsuit by the Estate of John Wainwright.” Pike looked like he was shitting a brick. “He did sit on that case, didn’t he?” Sloane asked.
“I’m afraid I’m not following you; what is it about
that
file you’re interested in?”
“Same thing, motion to disqualify.”
“And the basis for a disqualification in that case would have been what?”
“The defendant was Winchester First Street Bank.”
“I understand that.”
“Judge Boykin sits on the bank’s board of directors.” Sloane paused to allow for the figurative “thud.”
Thank you, Alex.
Pike started to reply, but Eileen Harper returned carrying two bulging files. She put them on the counter, calm and professional as ever. “You can’t remove them but I can provide you with a desk while you review them,” she said.
Sloane hadn’t taken his eyes off Archibald Pike. “That’s okay,” he said. “I think I have all the answers I need. The prosecutor might want to review them, though.”
F
RESH
S
TART
Y
OUTH
T
RAINING
F
ACILITY
S
IERRA
N
EVADA
M
OUNTAINS
Jake set his tray down and sat across from Bee Dee, Henry, and T.J., all of whom were moving slowly and looked a bit worse for wear this morning. Dirt caked their hands and forearms, and blackened their fingernails. With the morning light at their backs they looked like construction workers getting ready to start their shift. The
guards had worked them until ten minutes before lights-out Saturday night, got them up early Sunday, and continued the labor camp. They gave them little to eat and did not allow them to shower or to brush their teeth, at night. They marched them straight to their dorms. Henry told him Overbay couldn’t work them Monday because of the teachers and counselors.
Now they all sat trying to wake up. Only Henry was eating, stabbing at his pancakes and making short work of sausage links.
“What do you know about the greenhouse?” Jake asked as Henry shoved a large wedge of pancake dripping with maple syrup into his mouth.
“It’s restricted. You can’t go in,” he mumbled, jaws working overtime.
“I did.”
Henry stopped chewing. “They lock it,” he said, which came out sounding like, “They wock it.”
“The door was unlocked. I broke my pick and was looking for another one.”
Henry drank milk and swallowed with effort. “What’s in there?”
Jake shrugged. “Plants. Lots of them.”
T.J. shrugged fatigue from his shoulders and joined the conversation. “So why do they lock it?”
“That’s that I’m wondering,” Jake said.
Henry used the final wedge of pancake to mop up what was left of the syrup. “I don’t know.” He stabbed his fork at the second of T.J.’s pancakes. “Are you going to eat that?” T.J. slid his plate to the side.
“They have a bunch of string, too.”
Henry nodded. “They use it for the hops,” he said, rolling the pancake into a burrito and eating it with his hands.
“What are hops?” Jake asked.
“It’s a plant. They use them to make beer. I’ve seen ’em before. They grow on the string like a vine. They grow them up in the mountains. They make us work up there.”
“When do they do that?” Jake asked.
“They plant in April or May and go through the summer. That’s
when they cut down the vines, like August or September. The brewery uses the hops to make its beer. The guards pick kids out and take them up there. It’s in the brochures. They call it outdoor education and make it look like you’re learning all these cool survival skills, but it’s all bullshit. The kids in the brochures are actors. They make us work.”
“Have you ever been?” Jake asked.
“Once. And it sucked big time.”
“Is that what they use the horses and donkeys for?” Jake asked.
Henry nodded. “They have to pack everything in. They drive you in the bus as far as they can. Then they make you hike the rest of the way. That sucks big time, too. They fit you with these heavy packs and it’s steep as hell.”
The first bell rang, signaling the end of breakfast. They had fifteen minutes to get their rooms straightened for inspection and to brush their teeth before the second bell, a five-minute warning to get to class. Henry folded the remainder of T.J.’s pancake around another sausage link and shoved it in his mouth in two bites.
When Jake stood to clean his plate T.J. asked, “Have you heard anything?” T.J. had asked him the same question five times over the weekend. Jake hadn’t told him what Bee Dee had said, that Big Baby and T-Mac had likely kept their mouths shut because they wanted an opportunity to get even.
“Nothing.” Jake put his tray with plate and utensils on the conveyor belt, and it rolled through the window into the washroom.
“So we’re good then,” T.J. said, following Jake and Bee Dee to the exit. “If nobody has said anything by now, they’re probably not going to, don’t you think?”
“Probably not,” Jake said, glancing back to reassure him and nearly running into the back side of Bee Dee, who had come to an abrupt halt just outside the mess hall.
Atkins had stepped into their path. “Well, look what we have here. Inmate Stand-up, have you made yourself some friends over the weekend?”
Jake didn’t answer.
Atkins leaned forward. “I heard about what happened.” The smile vanished. “Don’t think for a minute I don’t know who was behind it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.”
Atkins smiled. “That’s what I heard everyone was saying this weekend. But you do… You know.”
“No, sir.”
“We’re going to find out. Tomorrow we’re going hiking again, and this time it’s not going to be just a day hike. We’re going overnight, Stand-up. And we’re taking your newfound friends with us. I think you’re going to really enjoy it. You might even remember some of those things you seem to have forgotten.”
W
INCHESTER
S
UPERIOR
C
OURT
J
UDGE
E
ARL
B
OYKIN’S
C
HAMBERS
Archibald Pike did the unthinkable. Then again, he wasn’t really thinking. He flung open the door to Judge Boykin’s chambers and entered without even a courtesy knock. Carl Wade sat in one of the chairs across from Judge Boykin’s desk. Hands in his lap, his wide-brimmed hat teetered on the edge of the judge’s desk. Wade looked as relaxed as a southern gentleman whittling wood on a hot summer day.
“Where’s Judge Earl?” Pike asked.
Wade pointed a finger from his lap. “Still on the bench, I guess.”
Pike considered his pocket watch, snapped it shut. An awkward silence ensued. “Do you have a meeting with the judge?” he asked.
Wade shrugged. “Judge asked me to be here at eleven. So here I sit. Something wrong? You look like you saw the courthouse ghost.”
“No, nothing.”
“You going to close the door?”
Pike shut the door and stepped farther in. Four generations of Boykins stared at him with eyes as dark as a crow’s. The black-and-white portraits hung in succession, starting with great-grandfather Earl, and they always gave Pike the willies. The family resemblance was truly remarkable, especially the eyes, cold and dark. Pike wandered
to the second chair, pulled out his pocket watch, and reconsidered it.
“Something on your mind, Archie?”
Pike did not appreciate the nickname, but he’d given up reminding Wade. “I need to talk to the judge.”
“What about?”
“Private matter; you wouldn’t be interested.”
The interior door opened. Judge Earl bounded to his desk, black robe unzipped, pausing when he saw Pike. Boykin dropped a file with a thud, shrugged from his robe, and flung it onto his chair. The robe hid much of the man’s girth. Without it, his barrel chest and belly were on full display beneath a white, short-sleeve shirt and paisley tie.
“Did we have an appointment?” Boykin asked.
Pike looked to Wade. Boykin raised a hand, motioning for him to get on with it while keeping busy at his desk. Wade smiled.
“Sloane came back. He was in the clerk’s office this morning. Evelyn let me know.”
“Filing more pleadings was he?” Boykin asked, sounding unconcerned.
“Having files pulled.” Pike again looked to Wade, but Boykin offered no further explanation for Wade’s presence, and the severe look on his face, like the faces in the pictures on the wall, did not invite further inquiry.
“He asked for the Tom Goode file, the one for the cost overruns at Fresh Start. He said he wanted to see the motion to disqualify filed by the city attorney.”
“There was no motion,” Boykin said, sifting through papers.
“That was his point.”
Boykin stopped moving the pile. “What else did he say?”
“He said Goode did a remodel of your home, that he’d checked the plans at the building department. Did you remodel your home?”
Boykin ran a finger across his lips. The window at his back created a rectangle of light on the carpet. “What other files did he ask to see?”
“The Wainwright file. For the same reason, to see whether the city attorney had filed a motion to disqualify you because you sit on First Street’s board of directors.”
Boykin cleared his throat. “Thank you for the information, Archibald. If you hear anything else, keep me advised.”
Pike didn’t move at first, then realized he’d been dismissed. After Pike had closed the door Boykin directed his comments to Wade. “Carrie at the bank called yesterday afternoon. She said a bank examiner has been asking for some of my loan documentation.”
“You think it’s Sloane?” Wade asked.
“She said it was a woman; probably someone working for Sloane though. Too big a coincidence.”
Wade asked, “How do you want to handle it?”
“It appears that Mr. Sloane is having a hard time getting the message.”
“You want me to get ahold of Atkins again?”
“We need to send Mr. Sloane a more direct message. One that ensures he knows there are consequences to his actions.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t have anything in mind. Let Dillon know. That’s his arena. But tell him I want this handled in a way that does not come back to bite me in the ass. Tell him that if it does, I’m going to take a much bigger chunk out of his ass. Tell him I want it made clear to Mr. Sloane, and to the detective, that I don’t appreciate people looking into my private matters, that their two boys aren’t the only ones who might find themselves in a dung heap of trouble.”
K
NOCK
-M
E
-S
TIFF
R
ANCH
G
OLD
C
REEK
, C
ALIFORNIA
Monday night Dave Bennett brought Molia and Sloane Tupperware filled with diced chicken sauteed with onions and peppers in a mole sauce, rice, beans, and warmed tortillas. Molia had taken an afternoon nap after his all-night vigil at the Sutter Building, but awoke at the smell of food. He sat at the table looking half asleep, dark bags under his eyes, hair unkempt. Sloane was glad
the bunkhouse didn’t have a mirror. He knew he didn’t look much better. The stress was wearing on both of them physically as well as mentally.
Molia filled one of the tortillas and rolled it like a cigar, eating it with his hands as gusts of wind continued to shake the bunkhouse and whistle through the unfilled cracks in the knotted pine. The windows rattled so hard Sloane half expected them to blow out, frame and all. “This whole place might explode if we don’t open the doors and give the wind a place to pass through,” Molia said, only half joking.
The gusts had begun late in the afternoon, rolling over the hills and across the valley, at times sounding like a high-speed train. Sloane had papers strewn across the worktable, reading with the aid of the two camp lights.
“What did I miss?” Molia asked.
Sloane picked up his legal pad, reviewing his notes. He’d written the names of Judge Earl Boykin and Victor Dillon on the page along with First Street, and the Sutter Building and drew lines between them each time he found an interconnecting thread.
“Boykin takes a loan from the bank on whose board he sits as a director, ostensibly to remodel his home. He even goes so far as to get a set of construction drawings drawn up, though the contractor never pulled any permits and the work never actually happens.”