“I wouldn’t say you’ve wrecked your marriage. It’s probably a good deal more resilient than you give it credit for. But you’re cornered. They can still release that video.”
“It’s already done its damage.”
“Oh, there’s a lot more it can do. That... gigolo was a party to a case you’re presiding over. You could be sanctioned by the CJC, and worse.” The CJC was the Commission on Judicial Conduct, the secretive body that investigated all judges accused of wrongdoing. “It would destroy your public standing, love. It would end your career. We don’t want this video made public. You can’t be associated with this man.”
“Oh, God, what have I done?”
“I know this looks bleak, but there’s nothing to be done about it tonight. Right now, what you need is rest. Let me show you to your bedroom and get you some towels and whatnot. You’re welcome to stay as long as you want.”
“You’re the best.”
She thought of something and retrieved her purse from the floor next to her chair. She rifled through the purse, groaned, looked up. “Oh, God.”
“Anything you’ve forgotten I’m sure I can provide.”
“My sunglasses.” Her stomach went tight.
“That I can’t help you with. You’ll have to stop home tomorrow, pick up some clothes while you’re at it.”
But Juliana’s thoughts were elsewhere. “My purse fell when I saw his — body. I nearly fainted, and everything went flying. My sunglasses must have gone under the desk or something. I must not have seen them.”
“Is your name on them? Are they in a case?”
Her head was pounding. “My name’s not on the case, but—” She pulled her car keys from her purse and stood up, her eyes throbbing.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to get them back before the police declare it a crime scene.”
“What if it is already?”
“Then I’ll turn around.”
“Don’t go back there,” Martie said. “Plus, you’ve had a drink. I don’t think you should drive.”
“You’re right about driving,” Juliana said. “I’ll get a Lyft. But I have to get over there now.”
29
It was past midnight, but she was wide awake. A terrible panic had seized her, electrified her blood. The Honda Accord hurtled along the Mass. Turnpike. It was not the route she’d have taken, but she was too distraught to say anything to the Lyft driver. Was she leaping to conclusions? Might she have dropped her sunglasses in her car? She was pretty sure she hadn’t. She kept her car tidy and would have noticed. No, she was increasingly certain that they’d fallen out in the hotel room and were still there, probably under the desk.
Assuming the police hadn’t been called, she was then faced with the problem of getting into the hotel room. That was a tough one. All the housekeepers would have left for the day. Hotel security? A low-cost, bare-minimum hotel like the Home Stay Inn probably didn’t have security. Just someone at the front desk.
Well, there had to be a way. She would figure something out.
From a block away she saw the flashing blue lights of the police cruisers double-parked in front of the hotel.
Her mouth went dry. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “Can you take me back to Boston?”
The driver, a Vietnamese man with an unusually wrinkled face, gave her a baffled look and pulled a U-turn on the deserted street.
Her thoughts raced. The housekeeper must have notified her manager, who called the police. She was pretty sure it would be treated by the police like a possible homicide, the room designated a crime scene.
Her sunglasses. Even a rudimentary search of the room would turn them up. But they wouldn’t know whose they were, would they? There was no way to connect them to her. Was there?
Fingerprints. Her prints were all over the sunglasses. And her ten prints had been in the system since she joined the US Attorney’s office, however many years ago. It might not happen immediately, but the crime scene techs would put the glasses in an evidence bag and run the prints, and her name would come right up. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in the next few days. Then she would be connected to Matías Sanchez no matter what she did.
She stared out the window at the whizzing cars, the streaking lights. What a goddamned rookie mistake it was to go back to his hotel room! She was finding it hard to think clearly. Were there any strings to pull? Somehow she had to keep her name out of this investigation. Was that even possible?
The worlds of the Boston Police and the Superior Court barely overlapped, except when a cop wanted a warrant approved. She wouldn’t know whom in the police to call. And what could she hope to accomplish? The police would want to know why her sunglasses were there. The housekeeper had surely already told the police that she’d discovered the body while letting in a woman who claimed to be his wife. It wouldn’t take long for the police to figure out she’d been in his room earlier that day. They’d want to question her; she couldn’t get around that. They’d want to know why she’d been there.
What kind of an answer could she give them? Anything she told them would drag her in, force her to disclose what had happened, and that had to be avoided at all costs.
If she made calls to anyone, she’d just be incriminating herself. There was nothing she could do.
By the time she arrived back at the Ritz and took the elevator to the seventh floor, it was almost one in the morning. Martie, who’d given her a key, had left a few lights on for her. Lucy barked a few times, shrilly, but then, fortunately, stopped. She flipped off the lights and found her bedroom, and very quickly she was asleep.
30
The jury in her morning trial was out, luckily, so she was able to work quietly with Kaitlyn in her lobby. She’d barely gotten a few hours of sleep and was grateful for the slow pace of the day. She skipped lunch, had no appetite.
Every time her phone rang her first thought was that it was the Boston Police. But the call never came.
The afternoon was busy, with a number of oral arguments and motions. But she was glad to be busy. It distracted her. She kept seeing the man’s body, his grotesquely contorted face. The man had been murdered.
What did that mean about her? Might she be a target too?
She entered the courtroom, and everyone stood. She sat down in the high-backed leather chair and looked around. She felt a low-grade dread. She was finding it hard to concentrate. She said, “Are we all here?”
Harlan Madden kept looking back at the door.
Juliana said, “Should we wait for your co-counsel?” She felt dry-mouthed and tense and wary.
“Well, frankly, Your Honor, he hasn’t been answering messages, so let’s just continue without him.”
Juliana felt her stomach drop. She had to be careful about what she said. She needed to think clearly. Coffee would help, but she had to avoid drinking too much: caffeine would make her even more anxious.
That afternoon the two sides in the Wheelz case were presenting oral arguments. A few weeks earlier, the defense had asked Rachel, in the form of an interrogatory, to describe all “sexual and romantic relationships” she’d had in the last five years. Glenda Craft wouldn’t let her reply. That was an outrage, she said. So Harlan Madden had served a motion to compel her to answer. Then both sides filed briefs. Today they would go at it full bore in the courtroom, arguing over whether the defense had the right to grill Rachel on her sex life before she started working for Wheelz.
When she first became a judge, Juliana was astonished at how different it was from being a trial attorney. It was like going from mono to stereo, from black-and-white to Technicolor. All of a sudden she had to listen with both sides of her brain, understand dueling arguments at the same time. You had to see three-hundred-sixty degrees. You had to keep an eye on which juror was sleeping. You also had to make decisions with alarming speed, sometimes. You saw a lot of suffering and felt the stress of wanting to get every decision right. You had to be extremely empathic. You had to understand the humanity, the greed, or the sorrow of the defendant and the anguish of the victim’s family.