Disclaimer: these are not my characters and I make no profit from them.
Author's Note: It's missing-scenes over time, and these are related to: "The Birthday Present", "If You Could See What I See", and "Poker Night". There are also references to a whole slew of stories by Cheri and me, including, but not limited to, "For the Record" and "Chairs".
As always, thanks to the quick and patient betas: Owl and Cheri.
Visiting Hours
By L.M. Lewis
February, 1985
Hardcastle was napping, finally, and Mark thought he might have dozed off himself for a moment or two. Certainly he'd reread the same paragraph in the latest issue of Car and Driver at least three times and now the copy was lying open on the floor, where it had slipped down off his lap. And certainly if he'd been awake he would have heard the footsteps in the hallway, and warded off the visitor before the door had started to open. If nothing else, he felt entitled to do that when the judge was sleeping.
But he'd missed the cues, and now the discussion would have to take place at the foot of the bed, and Hardcastle would undoubtedly wake up before it was finished. Despite the pain medication, he was still a notoriously light sleeper.
Mark sighed and straightened up, as the door swung open wider. He assumed his company smile and tried to look merely concerned rather than outright annoyed.
But the face peering around the edge of the door was possibly more concerned than his own. And it was Mattie Groves.
"Oh, damn," she whispered, "bad time, huh?"
"Never," Mark whispered right back at her, his expression transformed into a welcoming smile. Then he cast a cautious glance back over at the patient, who had murmured and stirred at just this quiet exchange. "He'll be mad if he sleeps through your visit."
Mattie frowned slightly. The man in the bed, IV hanging overhead, looked nearly as pale as the sheets that were tucked in around him, and his expression, even in sleep, held the shadows of pain. Her look broke away from him with a slight shake of her head. Then she gestured to Mark with one summoning finger. He nodded, already up out of his chair, and followed her out into the hallway.
"He'll be okay for a little while," she assured him, tugging on his sleeve a little as she led him back toward the elevators and the visitors' lounge. "He needs the sleep." She cocked her head and gave him a once-over. "You look like you could use some, too."
He shrugged, but allowed her to lead him toward a quiet corner in the lounge and he took a seat kitty-corner from hers.
"I'm okay," he said in a tone that he hoped sounded normal.
"Hmmph," she answered, sounding a lot like Hardcastle himself. Mark thought there must be something judicial in tone that came with the robes and the gavel. "I talked to Frank," she added, leaving it up in the air exactly what she and Frank had talked about.
Mark squirmed internally, hoping it wouldn't work its way out to the visible surface but pretty sure his eyes, at least, had shifted noticeably. They had, apparently. She touched his sleeve again, two quick tugs—a gentle demand for eye contact.
That was another trait she shared with Hardcastle. He might, if he really put his mind to it, avoid answering her, but he didn't think he could lie to her face.
"Well," he said, trying for something upbeat, yet realistic, "maybe not exactly okay, but . . . we're getting there."
She gave him a judicious look and eased back a bit, seeming to settle for it . . . for the moment, anyway.
He relaxed slightly. His smile became more natural. "Thanks," he said.
"What for?"
"I dunno," he shrugged, "for just being here. I mean . . ." he fumbled, "I know you're here to visit him but—"
"Frank was right," she said, in abrupt interruption.
Mark pulled up short and gave her a puzzled look. "'Right'?"
He almost immediately wished he'd said nothing. Mattie was giving him another one of those scrutinizingly judicial looks.
"Okay," he finally sighed, "I was a little shook up. A lot happened. It's been a rough week."
"So," she said sagely, "of course you went to your friends and told them about it. Talked things through."
He winced. It sounded so reasonable when she put it like that. He pulled himself together. "You know, Mattie, it's not like I can do that. I mean, most of the guys I know, I just talk cars with them. They're not going to get this Lone Ranger stuff at all. And the rest of them, hell, I need special dispensation just to call them on the phone, and they're sure as hell not going to get what happened."
He thought he'd stated it pretty clearly, but somehow the long silence that followed did not make his position sound as reasonable as hers was.
"Okay," he finally said, "there's Frank. I talked to him."
"More like he talked to you," Mattie observed.
"Sort of . . . I suppose," Mark admitted. He shook his head and felt his expression tighten and he muttered, "You guys don't understand."
More silence. He glanced up to see how much offense he'd caused. He really did like Mattie. Hell, there weren't any other superior court judges he was on a first name basis with. To his surprise, her expression was graced with an enigmatic smile.
"Well, you don't," he said, out loud and slightly more confident.
"Maybe not," she said, "and maybe partly because you won't explain," she added firmly. Then she looked at him, suddenly more focused. "I'm glad he has you. I think you've done him a world of good."
Mark felt the flush starting, the idea of getting praise after the debacle that had landed Hardcastle in the hospital—and what had followed—still horrified him.
Mattie seemed to sense his discomfort and held one hand out palm forward. "And I'm glad you have him. God knows what kind of trouble you would have gotten yourself into on your own. Stealing that car to get even with Cody—has anyone ever sat you down and told you how idiotic that was?"
Embarrassment of a different sort subsumed his flush, but this time there was a grin to go along with it. He jerked his head back in the general direction of Hardcastle's room. "Yeah. Not exactly those words, but . . . yeah."
"Well, I hope you listened." She shook her head and her small smile blossomed into a familiar expression. "Anyway, there's bound to be some times when he can't be there for you—"
Mark felt a familiar clutch in the center of his chest—how close those words had come to being permanently true. He nodded once, soberly, and then his gaze dropped down to a spot on the carpet.
"—and you should know by now that there's other people you can talk to."
There'd been the slightest emphasis on the word 'other' and, in the pause that followed, Mark hadn't dared raise his eyes. He knew he ought to just say 'Thanks, I'll remember that', but that would be tantamount to a lie.
What finally did come out was sharper than he'd intended. "I'm sorry, but you don't get it."
He sneaked a peek upward, figuring he'd probably used up all her patience. No, the enigmatic smile was back.
"What don't we get?" she said, her patience sounded only slightly strained.
Mark lifted his chin and shrugged almost imperceptibly. "You . . . and Frank—you've been okay about it—"
"About what?"
"About me," Mark said. "But let's face it, you're both officers of the court and I'm . . . I'm the reason they have courts in the first place."
Mattie was giving him a puzzled frown. "You mean--?"
"I mean, I'm always one technical away from a bus trip back to the Big House. Come on, Mattie, be honest—when you heard Hardcase was taking on another reform project, what was your first thought? Honest now."
The frown stayed in position and it gradually became apparent that Judge Groves wasn't prepared to lie, either. "That was before I got to know you," she said quietly. "But I'm willing to put up with your first assumptions, if you'll put up with mine. It's different now."
Mark sat there, hands loosely clasped in his lap. "Yeah," he said, "only this past week it hasn't felt that way. I think if Frank hadn't been there, and Dalem—" he found himself frowning, too, "he's my old P.O.—who woulda thought he'd be pulling for me? Even some . . . but the parole board—Mattie, it was that close." He held up his right hand, thumb and first finger almost touching.
"Frank mentioned that, too." Mattie looked thoughtful. "I don't think there was any serious question of finding you in violation of parole."
"It was on the list of possibilities. Maybe not number one. That woulda been ending Hardcase's little experiment." He waved his hand airily. "That's what I am to them. Some kinda weird experiment and they don't trust the whole set-up very much."
She'd let him vent. Now he caught his breath, surprised at how much anger there'd been behind the words. After a week and a half of watching his p's and q's, he glanced around anxiously, wondering who might have heard.
There was no one there but him and Mattie. And she still hadn't run out of patience.
"Did I ever tell you about how I became a judge?" she asked, framing the question with a quiet smile.
He shook his head. He was grateful for a change of subject.
"Well," she took a breath, "I wasn't the only woman in my law school class—there were three of us, but I was the only woman in the DA's office where I was hired, and it was always me they'd think of when they needed someone to handle a case with a female defendant. But here in LA, there were more female trial lawyers—more trials, too—and it's easier not to be the first. So this is where I came.
"I hadn't been here long before I got an invitation to a retirement party—it was for the first woman to have been elected to the Superior Court in this county. I'd met her a few times, had some cases in front of her—she was a class act, really knew how to run a courtroom. Of course this was LA, so the party was at a studio; I think it was over at Warner Brothers. There must've been a thousand people there and, in the middle of everything, they have this judge make her entrance—she rode in on an elephant."
Mark looked up from a moment of half-attention. "A what?"
"Elephant." Mattie paused, as though she were rerunning the reel in her mind's eye. "And there she sat . . .. Now, think about it. The first woman elected to the LA County Superior Court, with all the dignity appertaining thereunto," she intoned gravely and then shook her head slowly for a moment. "I dunno whose idea it was but if I'd have been her, there would've been no photo opportunities with pachyderms."
"She looked ridiculous, huh?"
Mattie quirked a smile. "Well, actually, no, she looked just as classy as she'd looked in robes up on the bench. That's when I think I first figured it out—"
"You're not going to tell me that it doesn't matter what other people think, are you? Because it does, especially when they're the ones who can yank your ticket."
"Oh," Mattie looked briefly surprised by the interruption, "well, no—it's not that what they think doesn't matter. It's more like what they think depends a lot on what you think. There she was, up on the back of that elephant, as serene as the Queen of Sheba and obviously enjoying herself—and everybody loved her for being such a good sport about it."
"So, you're saying I need to look like I'm enjoying being an ex-con?"
"Actually, I sort of thought you did. Most of the time you seem pretty happy."
Mark frowned. This wasn't one of those times, but he finally confessed, "Yeah, mostly. Especially the 'ex' part—it beats the heck out of actually being in prison."
"And it's pretty hard to disapprove of someone who's up there on the elephant, having a damn good time."
"Okay, maybe," Mark agreed slowly. "But not this week, okay?"
She reached over and patted his arm gently. "All right, but it'll come back to you. Just give it a little time . . . and for God's sake, Mark, talk to us."
January, 1986
He must've dozed off. He remembered Hardcastle finally taking his leave, sometime shortly after dinner. He usually stuck around at least until then, just to nag him about finishing his food. After that things were a bit blurry, probably on account of the pain pill—something about an errand.
He saw the door opening—that might have been what had wakened him. He half thought it might be the judge, returning from his own dinner, and he was prepared to shag him off--back to the estate to get some rest of his own.
"Bad time?"
He smiled at the familiar face that was leaning in past the edge of the half open door.
"Hi, Mattie." He essayed a wave with his good hand. "Nah, nothing on my dance card for tonight."
"Well," she stepped in and took a seat, propping her briefcase by the wall, "I would have been here sooner, but the wheels of justice and all that." She settled back, all the time seeming to be giving him a close look. "How are you doing?"
"Good . . . well, better," he said, which he figured was relatively true. It would have been hard to have been worse than he'd been a few days earlier.
She cocked her head, another judicious expression of hers. "I'd say you look a lot better than the last time I saw you."
He frowned. "Which day?"
She was counting back on her fingers. "Must've been the second day after the surgery. You were asleep and Milt wasn't waking you up for anybody." She paused, looking thoughtful. "He didn't look so great, either."
"We're okay," he said soberly. "Well, maybe not okay, but we're getting there."
She looked doubtful. "I talked to Frank."
Mark nodded once, the barest acknowledgement. Frank had been there the day before to take Mark's statement about the shooting. Millie Denton's predictions, and Hardcastle's initial response to them, had been an unfortunate sidebar to the discussion of the facts. Mark had sincerely hoped the lieutenant would keep that to himself.
"Nobody's to blame but Falcon and Price," he blurted out, and then he added stoutly, "The rest of it is all just a bunch of hooey." With that he hoped the topic was closed.
"Okay," Mattie leaned one elbow on the arm of the chair and tucked her chin down on her fisted hand, "that's true. They're to blame, no question." She hesitated, and then felt her way forward with more caution. "And you'll get better; you both will . . . especially if you help each other."
"He's here every day," Mark said, with more weariness in his tone than he'd wanted to show. "I mean, all day."
"And you've talked?" Mattie asked quietly, and it was apparent from the questioning tone that she didn't mean idle conversation.
"Yeah," Mark had dropped down to a mutter. "Some."
Mattie's 'hmmph' was proof positive that she was still on the short list of people he couldn't lie to. That Hardcastle was also on the list was evidence that he could go nowhere near the subject of Millie Denton's predictions with the man.
"I'm not talking to him about that. He didn't listen to me before and if he listens to me now . . . well, it won't do either one of us any good."
"It won't, huh? He's always right and you're always wrong?"
"I wasn't wrong." Mark felt a small ember flare into a flame of unexpected anger. "Not this time. He almost got us both killed." He'd come almost upright in the bed then fell back, panting. The knot of pain in his stomach was only partly from the strain he'd put on the stitches. "Sorry," he said.
"Why?"
He didn't answer, only casting a furtive look at her and then settling further down against the pillows.
Mattie sighed, then lifted her chin off her hand and did some settling back, too. A moment passed before she said, "I never finished telling you about how I became a judge."
He remembered the earlier conversation—another hospital, another time of tightly coiled emotions. He shook his head. "You left off at the elephant."
Mattie laughed. "Okay, well, that was just a little anecdote. I do think maybe it planted the seed, seeing her up there, but I wasn't really the elephant type." She smiled. "I did my job. I did a good job. I learned a lot—a big county DA's office. I paid my dues, even if it was mostly an old boys' club. And maybe a few times I thought I knew more about the law than the guy up on the bench. Appointment time would roll around, and guys to the left and right of me would be snapped up, never me." She shrugged. "Might have been because I never did the right things, talked to the right people. You can't expect everyone to be psychic."
"So how'd you finally get it?"
"Oh," Mattie shrugged, "I finally said the hell with waiting and I ran against an incumbent appointee. The guy was a horse's ass—pardon my French—and I won." She looked still slightly surprised by the whole thing. "I didn't know if I was really qualified, but I knew I was more qualified than him."
"But you're a good judge." He looked suddenly embarrassed for having ventured even a positive opinion. "Hardcastle says so," he added quickly.
"Well, that. See, I'd tried a couple cases in front of him. He was pretty universally known as a guy who chewed up careless lawyers and spat 'em out, but he ran a tight ship and I never had any run-ins with him.
"The day I was sworn in, I met him in the hallway—our chambers were down the same corridor—he said hello and congratulated me, and welcomed me aboard. He even remembered one of the cases I'd had in front of him." Mattie shook her head in bemusement. "I hadn't realized he'd even noticed me before that." She smiled and leaned in, adding in a conspiratorial tone "And it really was an old boys' club back then. I thought I would always be an outsider, even standing in the middle of it."
"He's not like that. People are just people to him," Mark said.
"Him and a few others, yeah. And he helped me out some, helped me avoid some mistakes. But most of all he listened to me, when I bitched about how things were, and how they ought to be. He listened. That's all I really needed, most of the time. One person to listen and tell me I wasn't crazy, and then I could handle the rest of it myself." She paused again, giving him a hard stare from under a cocked eyebrow. "You should try it sometime."
"He doesn't listen to me."
"If that were true you wouldn't be so worried about talking to him this time," she pointed out.
"Aah . . ." Mark frowned momentarily, then shut his mouth on whatever his protest had been intended to be.
"It'll take time," Mattie reached out and patted his arm, "but you should talk to him."
March 1986
He sank into the chair in the surgical ward's visitors' lounge, glad to finally be stationary. Dawn had come. He'd gotten his date safely home to the apartment she shared with a fellow graduate student, and now he was standing by to escort Claudia home when she finished visiting Frank.
He wondered how much longer Hardcastle would be stuck at the police station. He and the other three hostages had been hustled downtown to give statements. No doubt the judge would be part witness and part kibitzer in the ongoing investigation.
Meanwhile, Frank was out of the recovery room and had been pronounced 'stable', and an anxious Claudia had finally been able to see that for herself. Mark leaned his head back against the edge of the chair and felt his eyes drift shut.
The elevator doors opened a moment later, jarring him from a light doze. He jerked upright, still more edgy than he'd realized.
He half expected to see Hardcastle, coming to fill Frank in on the latest developments. Instead, the person standing in the hallway was Mattie, looking around, trying to get her bearings.
"Over here," he said, and even though he had spoken the words in a hospital hush, she started briefly before she turned toward him.
He tried for a reassuring smile, answering her question before it was asked. "He's awake. The docs say he'll be okay. Claudia's in there with him." He jerked his thumb in the general direction of the room.
"Bad timing, huh?" Mattie let out a sigh and although she looked weary, made no attempt to sit down. She twitched again, an unfamiliar gesture to Mark, and then wandered over to the window, gazing out at the sunrise.
"Long night," Mark said. Then he frowned. "How'd you get here?" The last time he'd seen her, she'd been heading downtown, a passenger in Hardcastle's truck.
"I hitched a ride in a black and white," she said. "Milt's probably going to be down there most of the morning."
"Seems like this one ought to be pretty much cut and dried."
"Well," Mattie sighed again, "there's the robbery and murder, and then there's the question of how they got out in the first place. I think Milt's hoping to get the kid to turn over on the other two." She'd said all of this without taking her eyes off the changing pattern of the early rays through the cloud banks. "Funny," she added, in a tone that suggested nothing humorous.
"What?" Mark asked, studying her with a little more concern.
"Oh," she gestured toward the sunrise and still didn't turn away from the window, "I was thinking how close we came to never seeing one of these again."
Mark got up stiffly and joined her, squinting into the light then dropping his gaze to the woman next to him. He saw her shiver slightly. "You cold?" he asked solicitously.
"Uh-uh." She finally turned slightly toward him. "Nerves, I think."
"Well, that makes sense."
"Hmm."
The shivering had set in in earnest now. Cold or not, Mark picked his jacket up off the chair and slipped it around her shoulders. She let him lead her over to a settee and they both settled in, side by side with her tucked firmly under his arm.
"Nerves," Mark agreed again, "that's natural."
Mattie frowned. "I thought I was a pretty tough cookie."
"You are," Mark nodded reassuringly. "Crazy guys with guns, though . . . you're entitled."
Mattie pulled the jacket around herself a little tighter and looked up at him dubiously. "But you're not—"
"Sure I am. All the time with that kind of stuff." Mark smiled knowingly. "It helps to talk about it."
Mattie bit her lower lip. "I thought I was a good judge of character—"
"You are," he assured her again, "after all, you like me, right?"
She ventured a smile; it faltered. There was a moment of silence and then, "I almost got all of us killed. It was me; I misjudged things completely."
"They were murderers before they got to the estate. You can't always reason with people like that, but sometimes you have to try." Mark let out the rest of his breath, caught in a memory of his own. He took another breath in, smooth and even and reconciled. "That's all you could do—hope for the best. Never give up."
He glanced over his shoulder. The sun was well up. He looked down at his watch. "Come on, you can stick your nose in there and say hi to Frank and Claudia and then I'll take you home. You know how it is, as soon as visiting hours start this place is going to be swarming with cops."
"Don't tell me they make you nervous," Mattie teased.
"Yup." Mark smiled. He unlatched his arm from around her and they both stood.
"You're right," she said, "it does help to talk."
"Toldja," Mark said smugly, giving her shoulder a squeeze. "A very smart lady explained it to me once—that and how to ride an elephant."