J is for Judgment (Kinsey Millhone 10)

“I think that’s enough. Let’s just say we drop it.”

This had to be the manslaughter charge that Wendell had pleaded to, a felony conviction that would have barred Tiller from his job in law enforcement. “Tiller, I heard the story about the manslaughter charge. You’re safe with me. I promise. I just want to know what happened. Why did Wendell take the fall?”

“I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“I never said you did. I’m asking for myself. It isn’t anything official. It’s a piece of information.”

He was silent for a long time, staring down at his desktop. Maybe his was one of those fairy-tale families where you have to ask three times before your wish is granted.

“Tiller, please? I don’t want any details. I understand your hesitation. Just the broad strokes,” I said.

He sighed deeply, and when he finally spoke, his voice was so low I had to squint to hear him. “I don’t really think I can say why he did it. We were young. Best friends. Twenty-four, twenty-five, something like that. He’d already decided the law was corrupt and he wasn’t going to sit for his bar exams. All I ever wanted was to be a cop. The situation came up. The girl died by accident, though it was all my fault. He happened to be there, and he took the blame. He was innocent. He knew it. I knew it. He took the rap, that’s all. I thought it was an incredible gesture.”

It sounded weak to me, but who knows why people do what they do? A certain earnest idealism takes hold of us when we’re young. That’s why so many draftees are eighteen and dead. “But surely he didn’t have any real hold over you. The statutes would have run out on a charge like that years ago, and it was his word against yours. So he claims you did something. You claim you didn’t. He’d already been convicted. After all this time, I don’t understand what the big deal was.”

“No deal. It wasn’t like that. He didn’t threaten me. I was paying off an obligation.”

“But you didn’t have to do what he asked.”

“No sir, I did what I wanted, and I was happy to do it for him.”

“But why take the chance?”

“You never heard about honor? I owed him. It’s the least I could do. And it’s not like I baked a file in a cake. Brian’s a bad egg. I’ll admit that. I don’t like the kid, but Wendell told me he’d get him out of the state. He said he’d take full responsibility, so I figured good riddance.”

“I think he had a change of heart on that score. Well, actually I’ve heard mixed reports,” I said, correcting myself. “He told both Michael and Brian he was going to turn himself in. He was apparently trying to talk Brian into following suit. But his girlfriend claims he had no intention of going through with it.”

Tiller rocked on his swivel chair, staring off in the middle distance. He shook his head, mystified. “I just don’t see how he’s going to pull it off. What’s he doing?”

“You heard about the boat?”

“Yeah, I heard. Question is, what’s he think he’s going to do with it? I mean, how far can he get?”

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see about that,” I said. “Anyway, I gotta go. I have a thirty-mile drive ahead of me and it’s past my bedtime. Is there another way out of here? I don’t want to run into Dana Jaffe again. I’ve about had it with that bunch.”

“Through the next department. Come on. I’ll show you,” he said, getting to his feet. He moved around the desk and took a left through an interior corridor. I followed. I thought he’d caution me to silence, extracting a promise about the confidentiality of our conversation, but he never said a word about it.

It was nearly 1:00 A.M. by the time I rolled into Santa Teresa. There was very little traffic and few pedestrians. Streetlights drew a pattern of overlapping pale gray circles on the sidewalk. Businesses were locked, but lighted. Occasionally I spotted one of the homeless seeking out the shelter of some darkened alleyway, but for the most part the streets were deserted. The temperature was finally beginning to drop, and a mild ocean breeze was offsetting the humidity to some extent.

I was feeling itchy and restless. Nothing was really happening. With Brian in jail and Wendell still missing, what was there to investigate? The hunt for the Captain Stanley Lord was currently in the hands of the Harbor Patrol and the Coast Guard. Even if I could charter a plane and do an aerial search—an expense Gordon Titus was never going to authorize—I wouldn’t know one boat from another at altitude. In the meantime, there had to be something I could do.