Three Weeks to Say Goodbye (13 page)

IT WAS DARK
and spitting hard little balls of snow when I arrived home. I’d called Melissa and started to tell her what had happened in the courtroom when she cut me off, saying, “It’s all over the news. They say he’s being suspended.” She said Brian had been at our house most of the afternoon, and they’d been following the case for hours, switching from channel to channel. Cody’s de mo lition had become a sensation.

I parked in the driveway next to Brian’s Lexus and killed the motor. The falling snow sounded like sand as it bounced off the hood and roof of the Jeep. I sat for a moment, suddenly exhausted, very much confused.

I felt a hundred years old as I willed myself to open the door and get out. The snow stung my exposed face and hands. I was numb, and not paying attention to the rhythmic thumping of hip-hop music from the street and the sound of a motor that should have been familiar and should have warned me.

As I reached for the handle on our front door the hiphop suddenly rose in volume. Later, I realized it was because the car had stopped at the curb, and the passenger rolled down his window and aimed the gun out.

The popping was muffled by the snow, and I was hit twice in the back. I turned on my heel and was struck in the face, hot liquid splashing into my open eyes, blinding me.

I could hear laughing over the roaring in my ears as the car sped away.

P
AINTBALLS
.
I’D BEEN SHOT
four times with a paintball gun. The color of the paint: yellow. The people who shot me? Garrett or Luis or Stevie, I couldn’t be sure.

Melissa called the police while I wiped paint off my face with a kitchen towel. It took several minutes for my heart to slow down, for the adrenaline that had coursed through me to dissipate. My hands shook as I wiped the paint from my eyes and ears. My terror faded and was replaced by anger.

The police officer who responded, who was in his midtwenties, Hispanic, with a wisp of a mustache and a belly straining at the buttons on his uniform shirt, wrote down my statement and took photos of the paint hits on the back of my coat. He shook his head while he did it, saying I wasn’t the first.

“There were quite a few similar instances this past summer,” he told us. “Kids compete by seeing how many citizens they can ‘kill’ in a given amount of time and tally it up. They get more points for a ‘kill’ in a good neighborhood, like this one. We’ve caught a few of them. Some are gangsta wannabes, but mostly they’re just normal knuckleheads.”

I bit my tongue, and Melissa and I exchanged glances.

He continued, “But you didn’t actually see them, right? Or get a description of the vehicle or a license plate?”

“I was blinded by the paint,” I said. “I told you that.”

“We’ll follow up and let you know if we find anything,” the officer said in a tone that meant we would never see him or hear from him again.

WHILE WE ATE
—Brian had fetched Chinese takeout—Brian slid his chair back and drew his cell phone out of his breast pocket. “I called Cody earlier and left a message for him to call or come by. He’s not answering.”

“I hope he doesn’t do anything to hurt himself,” I said, “or anyone else.”

I rehashed the trial for them, and Melissa shook her head sadly. “Poor Cody,” she said. “Do you think Ludik really thinks Cody set up the Monster?”

“Hard to say,” I said. “But he injected enough doubt into the proceedings, I don’t see how they’ll get a conviction now. He even had me wondering if Cody or some of his fellow cops might have planted some of the evidence. Not that I don’t think Coates is guilty of something—I’m sure he is. I just don’t know if they’ve got enough evidence that isn’t tainted to convict him.”

Melissa shuddered. “If he goes free, no parent in Colorado will be able to sleep at night.”

“And everyone will hate Detective Cody Hoyt,” Brian said, not without a vicious little note of glee.

“I doubt Coates will be able to infiltrate himself again, though,” I said, ignoring Brian. “Everybody will be on the lookout for the guy.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Brian said. “If he is found innocent, there’ll be nothing in his record. He might even be able to
sue to get his job back. You can’t prevent a man from getting a job because the cops may have set him up, you know.”

“Cody didn’t set him up, I’m sure,” Melissa said, scoffing. Brian steepled his fingers on the table and gazed over them at her. “Cody is capable of doing things you might not approve of,” he said. “In fact, I would say it’s possible they targeted this Coates guy and maybe did some things to make their case stronger. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s ever happened. And we know our Cody isn’t pure as the driven snow.”

“Brian!” Melissa said, angry.

“He isn’t,” Brian said. “I’m sorry, Melissa. But Cody takes pride in putting bad men in prison, and he doesn’t mind cutting corners if he needs to. He’s told me that. Once, he showed me what he called his ‘throw-down’ gun. It was a pistol with the serial numbers filed off he would have handy if he ever needed it.”

Melissa shook her head and looked to me for support.

I shrugged. Cody, in confidence, had told me as much before.

Things happened on the street, on both sides, that were under the radar. Cody had told me about some of them. According to Cody, since Mayor Halladay had been elected and had started building housing for the homeless and declared Denver to be a Sanctuary City, we’d been flooded with the indigent and illegal workers, mainly undocumented Mexicans. The gangs preyed on the new populace and sold them drugs and protection. The police, according to Cody, did their best to keep a lid on the situation without calling attention to the sharp rise in crime. When Denver was named host for a major political party convention, word came down from the mayor’s office to “get those people off the streets.” An unofficial crackdown was under way. The
level of tension between the newcomers, the gangs, the police, and the mayor’s office was rising. The police, if Cody was an indication of the rest of the force, felt the mayor was “embracing diversity” on the one hand and issuing under-the-table orders to clear out the riffraff on the other. While acting on the mayor’s wishes, individual officers knew that if a brutality accusation was made or an incident captured by a ubiquitous cell-phone camera of a cop pounding on a homeless man or a minority, the mayor would side with the alleged victim because Mayor Halladay was a champion of the downtrodden, according to his spokesmen. Brian had once been very close to Halladay, before he was mayor. They’d been involved in business ventures together, but they’d had a falling-out, and their relationship was no longer cordial.

“Cody might bend the rules,” I said, “but he’d never set up an innocent man. And he’d only cross the line in this case if he thought he was punishing a monster who might do it again. That’s why he was so mad at Moreland. It wasn’t about Cody. It was about the fact that Coates might go free and hurt more kids.”

“Speaking of Judge Moreland,” Brian said, withdrawing a sheaf of papers from his jacket pocket, “Melissa and I have been doing some detective work of our own.”

“Let’s hear it,” I said.

“I’m going to go put pajamas on Angelina,” Melissa said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

While she was gone, Brian said, “It’s amazing what one can find out using Google and a few well-placed friends in the right offices. Plus, there are a couple of wonderful high-society gossips who love to dish.”

With that, he outlined Moreland’s professional and marital history:

“In 1980,” Brian read, “John Moreland graduated from Ridgeview High School in Asheville, North Carolina. He was an outstanding student, first in his class. President of the debate team, quarterback, yadda-yadda. An only child, from what I could find. His parents are deceased.”

“Really? He doesn’t seem that old.”

“He’s forty-five. His parents died in a car accident when John was eighteen. I read the clippings. The police said John’s dad must have fallen asleep while he was driving home and drove head-on into a tree. Both parents were killed on impact, and Mrs. Moreland was thrown thirty feet through the windshield. There was some speculation that someone might have forced them off the road, but no one was ever charged.”

“Was Moreland a suspect?”

“My first thought. But he didn’t appear to be. He was at home with his girlfriend, waiting for his parents to get there. His girlfriend’s name was Dorrie Pence, and she confirmed his whereabouts. Remember that name, Dorrie Pence.”

I nodded.

“I’m still looking into this,” Brian said. “All I can get from the newspapers was it was a tragic accident. The whole community came to the funeral, and there were fund-raisers for Moreland, that kind of thing. I’ve got some real estate contacts in North Carolina, and I’ve put out some feelers to them to find out if they ever heard anything. In my experience, real-estate folks have their fingers into everything in the community—who might be moving, who might be divorcing and selling, that kind of thing. A lot of times they know more about what’s going on than the local cops. I mean, I know more about what’s going on in Denver than that doofus cop who was here, if you know what I mean.”

“Go on,” I said, seeing Brian was still clearly enjoying this.

“Okay, well, he came to Colorado right after he left North Carolina. He attended the University of Colorado on academic scholarships but he had plenty of life-insurance money from the deaths of his parents. He was never a poor college student, that’s for sure. He graduated with a major in political science. Then off to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude—of course. He was twenty-four, and he married his high-school sweetie, Dorrie Pence, in Denver.”

“Ah,” I said. “Dorrie provided the alibi, and he married her.”

“Right-o,” Brian said. “Garrett was born in 1989. No other children. An only child, like his daddy. Anyway, Moreland was in private practice in Denver for the next few years. He was a very highly regarded criminal-defense attorney before switching over to civil litigation. He was named one of the ten best litigators in the nation, yadda-yadda. From what I can find out, he was one of those men who just shines at everything he does. He was appointed United States Attorney and held that position for the next five years. But here’s where it gets interesting.”

Melissa came back downstairs with Angelina in soft yellow pajamas with feet in them. She looked darling, and seemed to be mimicking Brian with her chatter. I took her and held her while Brian went on.

“In 2001, Dorrie dies tragically in a hiking accident in the mountains. John and Garrett were with her, and they were apparently hiking a trail in a canyon when the path gave way. She fell sixty feet and bashed her head in on some rocks. John and Garrett saw the whole thing, but they weren’t able to save her. And it turns out she was six months pregnant at the time with their second child.”

Melissa and I exchanged looks.

“Were they sure it was an accident?” I asked.

Brian nodded. “There’s nothing in any of the news articles about it that suggested anything otherwise. In fact, Moreland is described as distraught and devastated. There isn’t much about Garrett, but he would have been only twelve at the time. Big funeral, lots of city fathers and politicians in attendance. Yadda-yadda.”

“So both his parents and his first wife die in accidents,” I said. “How strange. How many people do we know who’ve died in accidents? I can’t think of any.”

“Your uncle Pete,” Melissa said. “Didn’t he die in a boat accident? Drown or something?”

“There’s one,” I said.

“Do we know anything about Dorrie?” Melissa asked. “Did anyone know her very well?”

“Not many,” Brian said. “Judge Moreland was—and is— at all of the Denver society events and fund-raisers. I’ve seen him myself—he’s a fixture. But apparently she didn’t like the limelight, according to my gossips. She went back to the church big-time, apparently. She was a Catholic when they married, and she became very involved in the church here. Going to Mass every morning, that kind of involved. She was, well, very plain-looking from the wedding photo in the newspaper. John looked like some kind of movie star, and he married a homely girl on the heavy side. Later, she got
very
heavy. My best gossip described her as shy, overweight, and uncomfortable in a crowd. She and the judge were a mismatched pair.”

Melissa snorted. “She sounds inconvenient to a man on the make.”

“It gets better,” Brian said. “John Moreland married ex-model and heir to a cosmetics fortune Kellie Southards almost twelve months to the day Dorrie died. It was a massive wedding. And that same year—2002—he was
appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Colorado.”

“One year seems a little quick to me,” Melissa said, “for a man who was distraught and devastated.”

“Interesting,” I said, my mind racing. “But don’t forget that all we’re doing is speculating here. And we are talking about a judge who seems incredibly well liked and well connected. We might be jumping to conclusions.”

“And now we get to Garrett,” Brian said. “I’ll let Melissa take it from here.”

“GARRETT MORELAND SEEMS LIKE
a very bright and a very troubled young man,” Melissa said. “I don’t think that information will come as any surprise to us. I also learned it is very difficult to get any background on a juvenile through official channels.”