Dance for the Dead Read online

  Judge Kramer pushed the STOP button and sat in his dark office. He had been on the bench when the little boy had burst through the doors and run up the aisle screaming. The bailiff had made a reasonably competent attempt to head him off, but he had actually touched the bench and yelled, “I’m Tim Phillips.” What had happened in the hallway Judge Kramer had heard from one of the policemen who had piled out of the adjoining courtrooms to quell the disturbance.

  Judge Kramer pressed the intercom button on his telephone.

  “Yes, Judge?” came his assistant’s voice.

  “Where are they holding this ‘Jane’ woman?”

  “I think they took her for medical treatment to County-USC. I’ll find out if she’s in the jail ward and let you know.”

  “No,” Kramer said. “Just call the precinct and tell them I want to see her.”

  “Would you like a conference room at the jail?”

  “Have them bring her here.”

  The male police officer was tall and rangy, and the female was short and blond with her hair drawn up in the back and cinched in that way they all knew how to do. The department never had all-male teams transport a female prisoner anymore, so the judge should have been used to it, but the pairs still seemed to him like married couples from a planet where people wore uniforms. They ushered the prisoner into his chambers. When her face came into the light he felt his breath suck in. He had never gotten used to seeing a young woman’s face with bruises and cuts and blackened eyes. He tried to see past them.

  She was not quite what he had heard described on the tape. She was tall, as tall as he was if he stood up, and this realization made him intuit that it was better not to, so he stayed down behind his big desk. Her hair was black and hung loose to a place below her shoulder blades, but that probably wasn’t the way she wore it; they had combed it out because they always searched women’s hair. He could see that Timmy’s description was not wrong, just uninformed. This woman had the strange, angular beauty he associated with fashion models: it was striking, but geometric and cold. The judge’s taste ran more to women like his late wife and the little policewoman, who looked round and soft and warm. The woman’s hands were cuffed in front of her instead of behind, which meant they weren’t taking all the precautions, but the police officers were wary: the policewoman kept a hand at her left elbow, and the man was a step behind and to her right, leaving just enough room to swing his club.

  Judge Kramer said, “Thank you very much, officers. We’ve got some coffee in the outer office, and I keep soft drinks in the little refrigerator under the water cooler. I’ll be finished with the prisoner in about fifteen minutes.”

  The policewoman said, “Your Honor, we should mention—”

  He interrupted, “I know. I spoke with the arresting officer. Has she hurt anyone since she’s been in custody?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll chance it.”

  The prisoner held out her hands, and the male officer unlocked the cuffs, took them off, and said to no one in particular, “We’ll be right outside.”

  When they had closed the door, Judge Kramer said to her, “Sit down, please.”

  The woman sat in the chair in front of the desk.

  Judge Kramer probed for a way to break the silence. “I hear you’re one of those people who could kill me with a pencil.”

  She said simply, “If I am, then I wouldn’t need a pencil.” She looked at the tape recorder on his desk. “Is that running?”

  He said, “I want to assure you that no record will be made of this conversation. I just listened to a deposition of Timothy Phillips, and I decided that the only person left who can answer the questions I have is you. Mona Turley and Dennis Morgan are dead.”

  She nodded silently and watched him.

  “What do you know about the child’s situation?”

  “Who are you? Why are you the one who has questions?”

  His eyes widened involuntarily, as though someone had thrown a glass of water in his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “When you’ve been a judge for a few years, you’re used to being the only one in the room everyone takes at face value. My name is John Kramer. I’m the judge who was presiding in Courtroom 22. We hadn’t gotten to the petition to declare Timothy Phillips legally dead when he ran in and disrupted my court. For the moment, the matter is still undecided, and I’ve left it that way.”

  “Why?”

  “First I had to recess while the officers took you away. Then I had to adjourn for a few days to give time to the authorities who can verify Timothy’s claim. In a day or so, oddly enough, I have to set a date to give the petitioners the opportunity to refute the claim—fingerprints, blood tests, and all. Then I have to rule on it.”

  “Will you be the one who decides what happens to him after that?”

  He shook his head. “Not directly. At the moment he’s in the care of a very protective woman from Children’s Services named Nina Coffey. After a time there will be criminal cases—probably several of them. There will be a family court case to decide who is granted guardianship of Timmy. There will be some sort of civil action to settle the disposition of the trust. I can influence the direction some of those cases take if I find out the truth and get it on the record so it can’t be ignored. I’m asking what you know because I don’t have much time and I need to know where to begin. Once I rule on the petition that’s before me, it’s out of my hands.”

  “Is any of this legal?”

  “What I’m doing is so contrary to legal procedure that it has no name.”

  She sat erect in the chair and met his gaze steadily while she decided. “He was a ward of his grandmother because his parents were killed in a car crash. She was old at the time—about eighty. Whoever she hired to watch him didn’t. Along came Raymond and Emily Decker, and he disappeared. I have no way of knowing what was going on in their minds at the time. They may have been kidnappers who stalked him from birth, or they may have been one of those half-crazy couples who create their own little world that doesn’t need to incorporate all of the facts in front of their eyes. If you read the old newspaper reports, it sounds as though maybe they just found him wandering around alone in a remote area of a county park, picked him up, and then convinced themselves that he was better off with them than with anybody who let a two-year-old get that lost. I’ve tried to find out, and so did Mona and Dennis, but what we learned was full of contradictions.”

  “What sorts of contradictions?”

  “Timmy says they sent pictures of him to his grandmother, sometimes holding a newspaper, sometimes with his fingerprints. He doesn’t know what the letters said. If the Deckers knew where to send the letters, then they knew who he was. But I can’t tell whether it was a straight ransom demand or they were trying to keep him officially alive so he could claim his inheritance when he grew up, or whether they were just being kind to an old lady by letting her know her grandson was okay.”

  “What do you know about the grandmother?”

  “From what Dennis Morgan said, the police stopped looking. That means they never saw the letters. Grandma kept looking, so maybe she got them. She must have believed he would turn up eventually, because she tied up all the family money in a living trust for him and made a business-management firm named Hoffen-Bayne the trustee. She died a few years ago.”

  “Before or after Raymond and Emily Decker?”

  “Before. But I’m not the best source for dates and addresses. I’m sure if you don’t have it in the papers on your desk yet, it’ll be in the next batch. Anyway, I don’t think she hired somebody to kill them for kidnapping her grandson.”

  “You’re the only source of information I have right now. Who did kill them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who do you think did it?”

  “When someone killed the Deckers, they also stole all of Timmy’s belongings, every picture of him, and a lot of paper. If you’re looking for somebody, you would want the photographs. B
ut they took his toys, clothes, everything. That’s a lot of work. The only reason I can think of for doing that is to hide the fact that he was alive—that a little boy lived there. Maybe they did such a good job of wiping off their own prints that they got all of his too, as a matter of course. I doubt it.”

  “Who would want to accomplish that?”

  She hesitated, and he could tell she was preparing to be disbelieved. “What I’m telling you is not from personal knowledge. It’s what Dennis Morgan told me. This company, Hoffen-Bayne, got to administer a fortune of something like a hundred million dollars. They would get a commission of at least two percent a year, or two million, for that. They also got to invest the money any way they pleased, and that gave them power. There are some fair-sized companies you can control for that kind of investment. As long as Timmy was lost, the trust would continue. You’re a judge. You tell me what would happen if Timmy turned up in California.”

  “The court would—will—appoint a guardian, and probably in this case, a conservator, if you’re right about the size of the inheritance.”

  “That wouldn’t be Hoffen-Bayne?”

  “We don’t appoint business-management companies to raise children, or to audit themselves.”

  “Then the power and money would be in jeopardy.”

  “Certainly they would have to at least share the control.”

  “And they did try to have him declared dead.”

  “That’s a legal convenience. It relieves them of responsibility to search for him, and also protects them if someone were to ask later why they’re administering a trust for a client who hasn’t been seen for seven years.”

  “Then it would have been even more convenient if he were really dead. They wouldn’t have had to go to court at all.”

  “Filing a motion is a little different from hiring assassins to hunt down a six-year-old and kill him.”

  “Maybe. I think filing the motion was a trap. I think Dennis Morgan was poking around, and somebody noticed it. It’s not all that hard to find out what you want about people; the trick is to keep them from knowing you’re doing it. Dennis was a respected lawyer, but investigating wasn’t his field; lawyers hire people to do that. I think they sensed that if a Washington attorney was interested, then Timmy was going to turn up sometime soon.”

  “And you—all of you—got caught in the trap?”

  “Yes.” She stood up. “You asked me what I think, so you would know where to begin. I’ve told you. Dennis couldn’t find anybody but Hoffen-Bayne who would benefit from Timmy’s death—no competing claims to the money or angry relatives, for instance. Nobody tried to break the will during all the years while Timmy was missing. But I don’t know what Dennis got right and what he got wrong, and I can’t prove any of it. I only saw the police putting handcuffs on four of the men in the courthouse, and there won’t be anything on paper that connects them with Hoffen-Bayne or anybody else. I know I never saw them before, so I can’t have been the one they recognized. They saw Timmy.” She took a step toward the door. “Keep him safe.”

  The judge said, “Then there’s you.” He watched her stop and face him. “Who are you?”

  “Jane Whitefield.”

  “I mean what’s your interest in this?”

  “Dennis Morgan asked me to keep Timmy alive. I did that. We all did that.”

  “What are you? A private detective, a bodyguard?”

  “I’m a guide.”

  “What kind of guide?”

  “I show people how to go from places where someone is trying to kill them to other places where nobody is.”

  “What sort of pay do you get for this?”

  “Sometimes they give me presents. I declare the presents on my income taxes. There’s a line for that.”

  “Did somebody give you a present for this job?”

  “If you fail, there’s nobody around to be grateful. My clients are dead.” After a second she added, “I don’t take money from kids, even rich kids.”

  “Have you served in your capacity as ‘guide’ for Dennis Morgan before?”

  “Never met him until he called. He was a friend of a friend.”

  “You—all three of you—went into this knowing that whoever was near this little boy might be murdered.”

  She looked at him as though she were trying to decide whether he was intelligent or not. Finally, she said, “An innocent little boy is going to die. You’re either somebody who will help him or somebody who won’t. For the rest of your life you’ll be somebody who did help him or somebody who didn’t.”

  The judge stared down at his desk for a few seconds, his face obscured by the deep shadows. When he looked up, his jaw was tight. “You are a criminal. The system hates people like you. It has special teeth designed to grind you up.”

  As she watched him, she could see his face begin to set like a death mask. He pressed his intercom button. “Tell the officers to come in.” He began to write, filling in lines on a form on his desk.

  The two police officers swung the door open quickly and walked inside. The man had his right hand resting comfortably on the handle of the club in his belt.

  The judge said, “I’ve finally straightened this out. Her real name is Mahoney. Colleen Anne Mahoney. She was attacked by those suspects on the way into the courthouse. Apparently it was a case of mistaken identity, because she had no connection with the Phillips case. I’m giving you a release order now, and I want all records—prints, photographs, and so on—sealed … no, destroyed. Call me when it’s been done.” He handed the female officer the paper. “I want to avoid any possibility of reprisals.”

  “Will do, Judge,” said the policewoman. Kramer’s instinct about her was confirmed. She had a cute little smile.

  The policeman opened the door for Jane Whitefield, but this time nobody touched her. She didn’t move. “You should have those teeth checked.”

  He shrugged. “The system was never meant to rule on every human action. Some things slip through.”

  She stared at him for a second, then said simply and without irony, “Thank you, Your Honor,” turned, and walked out of his office.

  Jane Whitefield drove her rental car down Fairfax past the high school, the old delicatessens and small grocery stores and the shops that sold single items like luggage or lamps, beyond the big white CBS buildings and then into the hot asphalt parking lot at Farmers’ Market, where she found refuge from the Southern California sun in the cool shadow between two tour buses. The market was crowded on Saturdays, and it took her a few minutes of threading her way among the hundreds of preoccupied people to find the pet store. There were two glass enclosures out front where puppies lay sleeping with their smooth little potbellies in the air.

  She bought two cubical birdcages that had one side that could be opened for cleaning, and a two-pound bag of bird feed that was peppered with sunflower seeds. She walked across the market to a craft store where people bought kits for making bead jewelry. She drove out of the market and headed northward toward the hills, but then stopped only a few blocks up when she saw a secondhand store that looked as though it might have the right kind of teddy bear. Then she drove the winding road over Laurel Canyon to the San Fernando Valley, and on across the flats to the campus of the California State University at Northridge. She had been past the school once years ago, and carried a picture of it in her mind. It was the right kind of habitat.

  Jane had not done this in years, but she was very good at it. She drove around the nearly empty campus until she found a long drive with a row of tall eucalyptus trees beside it and a few acres of model orchard beyond them. She parked her car in the small faculty parking lot behind some kind of science building and carried her cages to the eucalyptus trees. Nearly everyone on campus seemed to be in a library or dormitory, so she had the luxury of silence while she worked.

  She propped open the sides of the cages with sticks that had fallen from the trees, took the food cups from their slots on the bars and filled
them with bird feed, then ran thin jewelry wire from the cups to the sticks. She balanced a stone on the open wall of each cage so it would come down fast and stay shut. She sprinkled a handful of bird feed over the carpet of fallen eucalyptus leaves in front of the cages, and went for a walk. She used her sense of the geography of university campuses to find the Student Union, and sat at a table in the shade of a big umbrella at the edge of a terrace to drink a cup of lemonade.

  Even at this time of year, Southern California seemed to her to be parched and inhospitable. The broad lawns in public places like this were still a little yellow and sparse from the eight-month-long summer, with its hundred-degree stretches. Back home people would be telling each other stories about years they remembered when the snow didn’t stop until May, and wondering if this would be another one. When her lemonade was finished she walked back across the campus to the row of eucalyptus trees. Before she turned the corner of the science building she heard a squawk, and then some fluttering, and she thought about the difference between birds and human beings. No matter how many times it had been done, each new generation of birds flew into the trap as though it had never before happened on earth. Maybe they weren’t so different.

  She approached the traps, but they didn’t look the way she had expected. One of them was just as she had left it, and the other one had two big blue scrub jays in it together. When she moved closer she could see that one was a male and the other female, slightly smaller with more brown on top and less blue. As she stepped to the cage, the questions began. “Jree?” asked the male. “Jree?” The female scolded, “Check check check!”

  They weren’t like the birds at home, but they were quick and greedy for survival, so territorial and aggressive that they had probably crowded in together without hesitation. It was too late in the year for them to be feeding hatchlings, and having one of each seemed right. They were already mated.