“Are you two a couple?”
“I guess. Sort of.” Ashley paused. “When the time is right, we’ll talk.”
“Fair enough,” she said, smiling. “Just be careful.”
“About what?”
After a long pause, she said, “Men.”
“Oh, so now you’re going to offer me relationship advice?” Ashley said. “That’s hilarious, Mom.”
In the morning, when she got to work, she found a note tented upside down atop her keyboard in her lobby. It was a message left by Kaitlyn, printed in architect-style all caps, her neat hand.
TROOPER MARKOWSKI/STATE POLICE
WANTS YOU TO CALL.
She didn’t return the call.
In the afternoon, both sides in Meyers v. Wheelz were seated in their usual spots in her courtroom. They were there for a status conference, scheduled long in advance. Administrative, nothing more.
“I want to start off today by expressing my condolences on the untimely death of your colleague,” Juliana said to Harlan Madden.
“Thank you, Your Honor. It, uh, came as a shock.”
“Obviously, this is going to create some difficulty for the defense.”
“Actually, no,” Madden said. “We’re okay.”
That she hadn’t expected. “Well, I want to make sure the defendant is adequately represented. I know you’re doing a very capable job of representing the defendant, Mr. Madden, but I can’t ignore the upheaval this must have caused.”
“But, Your Honor—”
“So out of an abundance of caution, I think we ought to put the brakes on a bit. Why don’t we push out the tracking order ninety days to give everyone time to catch their breath? Make sure you all have adequate time to process this and get things in order.”
“We actually don’t need more time, Your Honor,” Madden said.
The door to the courtroom opened, and a couple of middle-aged men entered and took seats at the back. She could tell right away that they were cops, despite their civilian attire.
“Your Honor,” said Glenda Craft, “we would rather move forward with the schedule already agreed upon. Respectfully, the defense counsel here before you is more than capable, and they’re not asking for more time. So I don’t think there’s any basis for the court to delay. Both sides are in agreement on this.”
“I understand,” Juliana said, “but I have to take into account this is obviously a significant and troubling event, and I don’t want anyone to look back on this a year from now and feel that we rushed.”
“Both sides want to keep moving full steam ahead,” said Madden.
“All right,” Juliana said reluctantly. She couldn’t push any harder.
Shortly after she returned to her lobby, there was a knock on the outside door.
“Come in,” she said.
The door opened. It was the two men from the back of the courtroom.
“Judge Brody,” one of the men said, tall with swept-back gray hair and a gray goatee. “I’m Trooper Markowski from the State Police, with the Attorney General’s office, and this is Detective Krieger, with the Boston Police. We’re sorry to bother you, but we have a serious matter to discuss.”
33
Juliana showed the two cops into her lobby. She sat behind her desk while the men pulled up chairs.
“Detective Markowski, is it? Or Trooper?”
“Either is fine,” said the taller man with the swept-back hair. “I’m a trooper with the State Police. I’m also an investigator with the Attorney General’s office, and Detective Krieger is with Boston Police homicide. Judge Brody, we’re really sorry to be taking your valuable time, but we’re investigating the death of a man named Matías Sanchez, who as you probably know is a defense attorney who had a case before you.” He sounded genuinely regretful about the imposition.
She nodded. “I’ve heard about it. A suicide, as I understand it?”
“An apparent suicide, yes, ma’am, but we’re treating it as a suspicious death.”
“What sort of death was it?”
She knew this was exactly the sort of question that homicide investigators normally would never answer. They ask the questions. But she was a judge. They had to treat her with respect. It was an awkward situation.
“He hanged himself. If it was suicide.”
“Hanged himself? Why is there a question about whether it’s a suicide?”
“It’s standard procedure in cases like this.”
“Like what?”
“Well, there was no note found, for one. And other aspects of the decedent’s body. It’s being treated as suspicious.”
“How can I be of help?”
Her brain was whirring at top speed as she spoke. How had they connected her to Sanchez? Was it just the Wheelz case? She knew they wouldn’t be talking to her, a Superior Court judge, without first having done all their homework.
“We just want to know what type of relationship you had with the decedent.”
“Relationship?”
And then for an instant she froze. She realized suddenly she was at a point of no return. She could either tell the truth, or she could lie. Whatever she decided to do, the choice was irrevocable. Lying to a law enforcement officer was, for her, for an officer of the court, nearly unthinkable. She’d never done it.
“As you said, he’s a defense attorney in a case I’m presiding over. He appeared in my courtroom for the first time about a week ago, just once, and never appeared again.”
“Yes, Your Honor, but did you have a relationship with him outside the courtroom?”
“Trooper Markowski, what are all these questions about?”
“Detective Krieger?” the man with the swept-back hair said, turning to his colleague, a small, worried-looking man with advanced male-pattern baldness.
Krieger, the Boston Police homicide investigator, spoke for the first time. “Yes, ma’am, we found a pair of glasses, sunglasses, in the decedent’s hotel room. I ran the latents myself and found your prints on them.”
Detective Krieger paused, giving her a furtive look.
“Sunglasses?” She looked back at him, met his eyes, furrowed her brow. For a moment, she was stymied as how to respond. She mentally tested out several replies before saying, “How bizarre.”
“Are you missing a pair of sunglasses?”
“I am.”
“Were they stolen?”
“Stolen? Not that I know of. I’m sure I just misplaced them.”
And there it was: she’d just lied to law enforcement. But...
“When did you notice they were... misplaced?”
“A couple of days ago.”
“What kind of sunglasses were they?”
“Oliver Peoples, tortoiseshell.”
Krieger nodded. She’d given the right answer. But what the hell else was she supposed to say?
“How much did you pay for them?”
“Around three hundred dollars or so.”
“Wow.”
“Prescription.”
“Did you file a police report?”
“On sunglasses? No, of course not.”
“Why not?”
“Because I figured they’d turn up eventually.”
“And so they did,” said Detective Krieger pleasantly. “Were you in the decedent’s hotel room at any time?”
Had they pulled the surveillance video from the hotel’s cameras? If they had, they’d have seen her on the tape, entering the hotel — maybe entering his room, if there were cameras in the hallways.
She felt a single bead of sweat roll down the back of her neck. Was her perspiration visible? She hoped not.
She shook her head.
“That’s ‘no’?”
“No.”
“Were you in his hotel?”
“No. I don’t even know which hotel he was staying in.”
“Well, do you have any idea how your sunglasses might have ended up in his hotel room?”