Guilty as Sin (13 page)

"Excuse me?" Ellen gaped at Bill Glendenning. "I'll be accommodating in what way?"

"Now, Ellen," he said, returning to that patronizing tone that set her teeth on edge, "we're not suggesting anything unethical. Jay won't be privy to anything sensitive. He simply wants a chance to watch you work. He doesn't need our blessing to do that, but he asked for it anyway, as a courtesy."

As a courtesy that would get him into the good graces of the state attorney general, which would damn well guarantee him access. No, he didn't need permission to watch the case from afar, but stroking Glendenning would grease wheels no reporter could even venture near, and it put Ellen in the untenable position of having to act the gracious hostess or run the risk of angering the powers that held the strings on her job.

The complexity and diabolical qualities of this move hit a nerve inside her and ground on it like a stiletto heel. Her temper flared and she clenched her jaw against the need to let it go. She shut her briefcase slowly, deliberately, the click of each lock as loud as a gunshot in the silence of the room.

She leveled a gaze on Jay Butler Brooks that had turned better men to ashes. "No, you obviously don't need my permission, Mr. Brooks. And it's a good thing because I'd throw you out of here in a heartbeat.

"I'm due in court," she announced with a cursory nod to Glendenning and Stovich. "If you gentlemen will excuse me."

She expected a reprimand, but none came as she walked out of the office. Or perhaps it was that she simply couldn't hear above the roar of her blood pressure in her ears.

Phoebe jumped up from her desk, wide-eyed, abandoning Quentin Adler in midcomplaint.

"Phoebe!" he wailed.

She made a face at the grating sound but ignored him, her attention on Ellen. "What did they want?"

"To make my life a living hell," Ellen snarled.

The phrase attracted Quentin like a bell for Pavlov's dogs. A career grunt in the Park County system, Quentin was a man whose ambition overreached his abilities—a truth that left him with a perpetually bitter taste in his mouth. Fifty-something, he held himself stiffly erect, discouraged from relaxation and respiration by a super-control girdle that seemed to push all his fat up into his florid face. His latest affectation to battle the aging process was a dye job and permanent that left him looking as if he had a head covered with pubic hair—a transformation that coincided with rumors of a fling between Quentin and Janis Nerhaugen, a secretary in the county assessor's office.

"Ellen, I have to speak with you about these cases you've dumped on me," he said.

"I can't talk, Quentin. I've got to be in court. If you don't want them, talk to Rudy."

"But, Ellen—"

Phoebe butted in front of him, pulling a handful of pink message slips out of a patch pocket on her tunic. "I've got messages for you. Every reporter in the western hemisphere wants an interview, and Garrett Wright has fired his attorney."

"There's a big surprise," Ellen muttered. Denny Enberg's heart hadn't been in the case from the start. She wondered if Wright had truly fired him or if he had withdrawn and allowed Wright to call it what he wanted so as not to prejudice his case in the eyes of the press. She would call on Denny later to find out what she could, although she didn't expect to learn much. What went on between a client and his attorney was privileged; a severed relationship didn't change that. "Any word on who's taking his place?"

"Not yet." Phoebe lowered her voice conspiratorially. "He has a really volatile aura."

"Who? Denny?"

"Jay Butler Brooks. It suggests inner turbulence and raw sexuality."

"Ellen, this is important," Quentin wailed.

"Tell that to Judge Franken when he cites me for contempt," Ellen said, handing the slips back to Phoebe. "His aura suggests intolerance. I'm out of here."

CHAPTER
 
7

"Miss Bottoms," Judge Franken wheezed. "Do you understand the charges against you?" Ellen had a suspicion much of life was a mystery to Loretta Bottoms. The woman stood gaping at the judge like a beached bass. An exotic dancer whose stage name was Lotta Bottom, Loretta had been working the circuit of strip clubs along the interstate between Des Moines and Minneapolis. She claimed to have been "working her way back home" when she was arrested for soliciting at the Big Steer truck stop on the outskirts of Deer Lake.

She stood before the court in a zebra-stripe knit dress that redefined the limitations of spandex. Built like an hourglass, tilting over on four-inch heels, breasts heaved up into her decolletage like a pair of huge cling caches. Franken was mesmerized by the sight. When he spoke, he addressed her breasts. Ellen figured he had as much chance of getting an itelligent answer from them as from any other part of Loretta.

"Miss Bottoms, have you discussed the charges with your attorney?" the judge asked.

"Yeah."

"And?"

"And what?" Loretta sank a long red fingernail into her mare's nest of bleached hair to scratch her head. "I don't get it."

Beside her, her attorney, Fred Nelson, rolled his eyes and banged a fist against the side of his head as if trying to dislodge the rocks that would explain his having taken on Loretta as a client.

"Loretta"—he spoke to her as if she were a thickheaded child who had asked "why" ten times too many—"we've heard the police report. The officer tells us he caught you in the men's room of the Big Steer truck stop performing a sex act with a twenty-dollar bill in your hand."

Loretta jammed her hands on ample hips. "I wasn't performing a sex act with a twenty-dollar bill. His name was Tater."

The spectators burst out laughing. Ellen bit the inside of her lip.

Judge Franken banged his gavel. His whole misshapen little head turned maroon—a sign that his temper had been worn down to the nub and his blood pressure was soaring in direct proportion.

"How do you plead, Miss Bottoms?" the judge demanded.

"Well, Freddy here tells me I gotta plead guilty, but I don't see why. It's nobody's business whose dick I had in my mouth."

Franken smashed his gavel down to quell the new wave of mirth. "We've been through this three times, Miss Bottoms," he croaked, trembling with frustration. "You don't have to plead guilty if you don't want to. You can plead not guilty, but then you'll have to come back from Des Moines to stand trial. Do you want to stand trial?"

"Well, I don't really, but—"

"Then do you want to plead guilty?"

"No."

Fred Nelson squeezed his eyes shut. "Your Honor, I have been over this with my client. We discussed the possibility of Ms. Bottoms entering a plea of not guilty, the court setting a date for trial and bail in the vicinity of two hundred fifty dollars cash. Then Miss Bottoms can go home and give this matter some more thought."

Two hundred fifty dollars was a usual fine for soliciting, and no one had any hope of or interest in Loretta Bottoms returning to Park County to stand trial. Ellen and Fred had hashed out the agreement in the judge's chambers. The county would get its money out of Loretta in the form of the forfeited cash bail when she failed to appear, and Loretta would be out of everyone's hair. It seemed a sweet deal to everyone but Loretta. The proceedings had already dragged on half an hour longer than they should have because they couldn't state the deal outright in front of God and the court reporter, and the need for discretion had confused Loretta. Franken was sinking down farther behind the bench. In another minute only his wrinkled forehead would be visible.

"Is that what you want to do, Miss Bottoms?" he asked through his teeth.

Loretta batted her false eyelashes. "What?"

No one held back their groans, including Franken. His was the loudest. His head popped up, and he groaned again, louder, a look of surprise widening his tiny eyes. Then he disappeared from view altogether, a dull thump the only clue he was behind the bench.

For a moment no one moved or spoke as everybody waited for the judge to pop back up like a puppet. But the moment stretched into another. Ellen looked to the bailiff, who started for the bench. Renee, the clerk, beat him to it, disappearing behind the bench herself. In the next second her scream split the air like an ax blade.

"He's dead!"

Ellen bolted from her chair and around the bench, where the clerk was on her knees, sobbing hysterically and pulling at Franken's robes.

"He's dead! Oh, my God, he's dead!"

"Call an ambulance!" Ellen shouted, and the bailiff dashed into the judge's chambers. As Ellen called out for someone to help with CPR, she was already tipping the judge's head back and feeling for a pulse.

"Has he got a pulse?" someone asked.

"No."

"Then let's have at it, Ms. North."

The voice registered with a jolt. She jerked her head up, and saw Brooks positioning his hands over the judge's sternum.

"As much as I'd rather have you putting those lovely lips against mine," Brooks murmured, "I think the judge here has a more urgent need."

"He was a good judge," Ellen murmured as she stared out the window af Franken's chambers.

The view overlooked the park and a sidewalk crowded with protesting college students. The imitation gas streetlamps were winking on. Life was continuing. The world was still turning.

The last hour was a blur of paramedics and people rushing in and out of the courtroom. Reporters loitering in the rotunda had stormed the courtroom for this latest twist in the tale, and a near riot had ensued when someone had recognized Brooks. The bedlam had culminated with a deputy clearing the room and the ears of the sound technicians with a shrieking bullhorn. The silence now seemed both welcome and odd.

"He was tough and fair," Ellen said, her thoughts returning to Victor Franken. She wanted to remember him as she had known him for the past two years, not as a crumpled husk on the floor of his courtroom, the black robes he had prized so highly torn open to reveal the thin, sunken chest of a very old man. "He had common sense and a sense of humor."

"Did you know him well?" Jay asked softly.

He watched her from his seat on the end of Franken's massive oak desk. They were the only people left in the room that had been the judge's office and sanctuary. Bookcases towered on all sides of the room, the shelves filled to capacity. The furniture looked so old it might have set roots into the floor. The ferns that sat in massive pots all around the room were the size of bushel baskets. With the green-shaded desk lamp the only light on, the atmosphere was almost forestlike.

Ellen lifted a shoulder. "I know he lost his wife years ago. He lived alone. He liked to garden." She fingered the frond of a fern that filled the window ledge. "The bench was his life. And now he's gone. Just like that."

She brushed a tear from her cheek, not embarrassed to have shed it in front of a stranger. A good man had just vanished from existence. There was no shame in mourning that. Still, she drew in a deep breath and composed herself, turning to Jay with a dignified facade.

"Thank you for helping."

He shook it off, frowning. "I don't need thanks. Jesus, my being there turned the whole thing into a damn circus. I'm sorry that happened."

"So am I," Ellen said. "He deserved a more dignified passing, although I heard him say it more than once—he wanted to die on the bench." She shrugged again and reached for some cynicism to insulate herself. "He got his wish and you got some publicity. Not a bad deal if you look at it that way."

"I didn't come here for publicity."

"No. You came here for a story."

He pushed himself away from the desk and crossed the room slowly, his gaze assessing, scrutinizing. The sensation it evoked was disturbing, but Ellen refused to let herself move away from it, from him. The rule she had applied with the Sci-Fi Cowboys came back to her—show no fear. Jay Butler Brooks posed no physical threat to her, but he was a threat in other ways, a clear and present danger on other levels—professional, ideological ...

She knew she was leaving one out as he stopped just a hair's breadth too close. His eyes were silver in the colorless light from the narrow window.

"Are you all right?" he asked softly.

Her hair had come loose from its twist as she'd worked to revive the judge. Strands fell along her cheeks, making him wonder how she would look with it all down. Younger, softer, vulnerable—traits that didn't complement her professional image. But the image was slipping now. Her studious glasses were gone, along with the jacket of her charcoal suit. The top button of her proper white blouse was open, giving him a glimpse of the tender hollow where throat met collarbone. The armor was coming undone. She couldn't seem to decide who she should be in this moment—Ellen North the consummate professional, or Ellen North the woman.