Chapter 4
Friday morning, Frank found Mark standing on the front porch a couple of minutes before nine.
"Sorry, traffic—you won't be late, will you?"
"No, plenty of time. Property Law doesn't start till ten, and Criminal is right after that. If I push it, I can be home by two."
"But you're not going to do that," Frank said firmly. "You're going to take your time and do it right. Right?"
"Frank, I kinda do these things on the reflex. It usually works out better that way. If I think too much, I screw it up."
"A final exam is not a racecar, Mark."
"No, you can't hit the wall at two-hundred miles an hour in a multiple-choice test." McCormick had managed a small grin. "Hell, you can't even do that in an essay exam."
Frank found himself smiling, too. Then he glanced over the younger man's shoulder toward the house. "Things going better?"
"Um, yeah, maybe a little . . . I think. He didn't throw me out last night."
"Well," Frank smiled, "there's a start."
"Yeah, he saw what I was studying and he started talking about Miranda v. Arizona, and Escobedo v. Illinois. God, Frank, he said it almost word for word the same last week. It was like he was back." The look on Mark's face was painfully hopeful, though it couldn't quite overcome the shadow of doubt in his eyes. "Anyway, he's around back by the pool. He knows you're coming."
"You took the heat on that one, huh?"
McCormick shrugged as he headed down toward the car. "I can take it. You just keep him out of trouble today." Then he was in the car and pulling away.
Frank turned and walked around the side of the house. He found Milt sitting at the table, sorting through a stack of papers. The judge glanced up at him as he approached.
"He's gone?"
"Yeah. Did you wish him luck?" Frank smiled.
"Luck, hell. I quizzed him. He knows his stuff," the judge admitted gruffly. Then he hesitated a moment before he plowed ahead, "I'm . . . I'm sorry I ran out on you yesterday."
"Lemme guess." Frank put his hand to his forehead and half hid a smile. "Mark put you up to this. Am I right?"
"Hell, no," Hardcastle protested, then a pause and, "Well, maybe." He looked out toward the ocean, grimacing. "It's just . . . he said you were really worried yesterday. That I scared you, taking off like that."
"Me, huh?" Frank shook his head. "Yeah, I was . . . Mark was, too."
"How'd he find me so fast?" the judge was staring steadily out at the waves.
"Oh, I'd say he knows you pretty damn well."
The judge looked sharply back at the lieutenant. Then he nodded once. "I . . . I was looking at his file again, last night. The later stuff—my notes. The stuff for the parole board."
Harper waited patiently as the admission came out, in fits and starts.
"Maybe I was a little hasty, yesterday. Some of what I said." He rubbed the bridge of his nose for a moment, then said, "I dunno; it just still really seems weird. I mean, I sentenced the guy to prison . . . And neither one of you seems to be able to explain it very well."
"Yeah," Harper smiled more broadly and shrugged, palms up. "What can I say? One of life's little mysteries." He pulled out a chair and sat down. "Do you think you can trust us on this one?"
Hardcastle was looking down at the papers. "I guess I'll have to." He'd started speaking again, slowly, without looking up. "But, Frank, you can know something without feeling it." The man was practically gritting his teeth in frustration. "Do you understand? It's like I died fifteen years ago. None of this happened to me."
"Maybe . . ." Frank leaned forward in his chair, "maybe you should take Dr. Neely's advice." He hesitated a moment, Hardcastle was looking at him now, fixing him with a wary glare.
"Which advice?"
"About . . . seeing the other specialist," Frank got the last part out in a rush.
"A psychiatrist?" Hardcastle's tone was cool. "You think I'm crazy, huh?"
"No. Not that." Frank sat back again. "I just think it might help you cope, you know, with all of this."
"Well," the judge went on, almost without a pause, "I'm not. I'm not crazy. I don't feel crazy." His right hand was a fist, resting on the papers. "Though I gotta say, I think I mighta been a little crazy before."
"No," Harper said emphatically. "You weren't."
There was no answer to this. The two men sat across the table from each other silently for a few moments. Finally Frank said, "Did you want to go anywhere this morning? I can drive you." He frowned for a moment. "When is your appointment with Neely? He said he wanted to see you in a couple of days. You've made one, haven't you?"
Hardcastle nodded. "Mark did. For Monday." His gaze drifted a little. "I thought maybe . . ." he stopped, clearing his throat. "You said Woodlawn? They're both there?"
Harper froze in the judge's questioning gaze. Then he said, simply, "Yes. Both of them."
"I think . . ." the judge frowned. "I think I'd like to . . ."
"We could drive over there," Frank replied quietly.
"Yeah," the judge, "maybe later on."
00000
Mark's first stop that morning was at the bank, making a one-hundred dollar withdrawal from his already slim funds. What had seemed like an excellent idea twenty-four hours ago, had now taken on a freight load of second guessing. No doubt the gift would have been the perfect thing for the old Hardcastle, but this new one? Or is this the old one and that was the new one? He frowned as he stepped up to the teller's window and passed over the slip.
You stayed up too late last night.
He watched the teller count out five twenties. Being quizzed by Hardcastle on nonfreehold estates at midnight had been . . . interesting. Okay, the part when we got to 'tenancy at sufferance' had been a little awkward.
He folded the money into his wallet and checked his watch, wondering just how fast he could plow through the two finals, stop off and buy the gift, and get himself home.
And then what? Then there would be three weeks of sitting across the table from a man who only knew him as a case file—a guy who'd forgotten every one of the thousand adjustments that have to be made when two people spend a whole lot of time in close proximity. Tenancy at sufferance.
00000
Frank turned in off 14th street and through the gates. The man sitting next to him had been quiet the whole way down the PCH and through Santa Monica. This cemetery was a far cry from the one yesterday—a gentle, civic antique rather than a funerary extravaganza.
He navigated the inner road and stopped near the Hardcastle plot. The judge got out, standing there, looking a little puzzled, waiting for guidance. Frank came around the front of the car and pointed it out to him, a pale gray granite marker of moderate size, between a palm and some neatly trimmed bushes.
He walked to it, Frank only a step behind, and, when he was only a few feet away, he stopped and studied the inscription—Nancy's name and dates. Off to the right side was a smaller stone, only slightly raised, bearing a bronze Marine Corps emblem and Thomas's name, his dates. Planted next to the stone was a small American flag, looking nearly new.
"Veteran's Day. Mark said that was the last time you were here," Frank said quietly.
The judge frowned and stooped to straighten the flag very slightly. "It's been a month?"
"They're not here," Frank insisted, still quietly.
"Then where?" Hardcastle replied, just as quiet, almost plaintive.
Frank put one hand on the older man's shoulder. "In memory. In your heart. For fifteen years."
He watched as the man return to the larger stone, and brushed his fingers over Nancy's name, then looked at the blank space on the left half of the stone, giving it a long, silent stare.
Then he turned away and began to walk back to the car.
00000
Mark closed the blue book and put his pen back in his pocket. He'd kept his answers to the point and dispassionate. It didn't pay to get personal on exams in Criminal Law. He surveyed the rest of the lecture hall, all the heads, mostly ten years younger than his own, bowed over their work, pens scribbling, pens poised. He only wished he wasn't going to be the first one getting up. Maybe Frank had a point.
What the hell difference does it make, anyway? I give it one more week, tops. He'll get the okay from Neely to stay by himself, and you'll be asking Leroy for a job doing repos.
He got up, and delivered his booklet to the front desk, with a thin smile and a nod to the proctor. "Happy holidays," he said grimly.
00000
They pulled up the drive at the estate, after another long and nearly silent trip on the PCH from Santa Monica. The Coyote was parked out in front of the main house.
"He beat us home," Frank observed casually, sneaking a quick glance at his watch.
The man in question could be seen, now that they'd rounded the fountain. He was standing out among the rose bushes, staring down at the ground, looking deeply absorbed in thought. At the sound of the car doors, he looked up, then waved them in his direction.
"Where'd you go?" Mark asked as they approached.
"Woodlawn," Hardcastle replied flatly.
Mark's eyes flicked over to Frank then back again. "Oh." There didn't seem to be much else to say for a moment after that.
Then the judge broke the silence. "How'd the exams go?"
McCormick was looking back at the ground. "They went," he said absentmindedly. And then, after another moment of silence, he looked up at the judge. "Sorry . . . I forgot." He exhaled. "You always ask me that. And that's what I always say." There was a brief flash of a smile. "It doesn't mean anything. A thing about not jinxing it, I guess." He glanced back down again, the smile gone. "Have you been out here recently, Judge?"
"You mean since Monday?" Hardcastle asked dryly.
"Yeah," Mark shook his head, "I mean since Monday."
"No. What are you looking at?"
"I dunno, footprints, I think." He pointed down at something that, with imagination, Frank might have called a print.
The lieutenant stooped, then crouched. Hardcastle leaned over. Mark looked further afield, stepping back carefully from what might be a continuation of the track.
Frank was frowning. "Okay, maybe. It's kinda faint. When does the yard service come?"
Mark looked up. "Tuesday mornings, but they don't do anything with these this time of the year. Somebody was walking around here, maybe last night."
"You didn't hear anything?" Harper asked.
Mark scratched the back of his head. "He was lecturing me on Escobedo v. Illinois." He gestured in Hardcastle's direction. "He's loud." Then he walked back along the projected path, towards the thicker bushes, still looking down.
Frank heard a 'harrumph' from the judge's direction, followed by, "Has he always been this paranoid?"
"I heard that," Mark said, without lifting his eyes from the ground. "See, here's another one." He pointed to a spot closer to the bushes. "Paranoid, hah."
"Maybe," Frank conceded, leaving up in the air, exactly who he was conceding to, "but it hasn't rained in over a week. There's not much there and they might be old; they might be the yard guy's."
"Frank?" Mark made a face. "If I turn out to be right, am I gonna at least get to say 'I told you so'?"
"I dunno, Mark," Harper shook his head, "two footprints in a rose garden isn't exactly the grassy knoll."
"Well," the younger man said, with a stubborn gleam in his eye that Harper was all too familiar with, "it's a start."
"He probably smokes, too," Hardcastle said decisively. He'd wandered a little further toward the edge of the property and now he was holding up the remains of a match. "Or maybe he struck it for light, to check an address. I don't see any cigarette butts." He was widening his search among the bushes.
"See, Frank?" McCormick pointed at the judge. "Evenhe can tell there's something wrong, and he isn't playing with a full deck."
"I heard that," the judge grumbled.
Frank smiled. "Okay, you two. Someone was here. At some time. Doing something."
"The truck, Frank?" Mark's look didn't quite have it over a puppy dog, but he was damn close. "Please?"
"I'll get it hauled back here. You can look it over. You know where everything's supposed to be as well as anybody."
"And the interior?"
"I'll get one of the techs to give it a once over. We'll dust it, but I'm not gonna have them run anything unless we get something else first." Frank sighed heavily. "And I won't be your personal liaison to the LAPD, if I don't get in there and get dug out of some of my backlog pretty soon." He started to head back toward his car, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. "And you two can do this Hardy Boys thing all you want right here, but you're not going to take it anywhere else without telling me first. Okay, Mark?"
The younger man nodded, with a practiced look of innocence.
"Milt?"
"Well, what the hell would—?" the judge launched into an aggravated mutter that was cut short by Mark's hand on his elbow and a quick shake of the younger man's head.
For a split second the image was so familiar that Frank didn't know whether to rejoice or be wary. In the end he settled for another sigh and another admonition, "Well, at least be careful."
And he left the two men standing side-by-side in the dormant rose garden.
00000
An afternoon's search of the premises provided no other solid evidence of a prowler, but Hardcastle had been impressed. McCormick had been diligent, organized, and persistent as hell. It was only when the early winter twilight began to hinder the search that he was willing to give up and come inside. From there he went straight to the kitchen. It was hard to shake the impression that the kid needed to stay busy.
The judge let him be. He'd been thinking his own thoughts, walking the grid out among the landscaping. And mostly what it kept coming back around to was how wrong that empty space on the gravestone looked—how strange it was to be dead and gone, in all but name only.
He heard the sounds from the kitchen and felt the itching resentment returning. Nancy ought to be coming in from the garden; Sarah calling them both into the dining room, and Tom . . . but Tom was away.
He jumped when he heard the shout from down the hall. "Chow's on." He got up heavily, tried to compose his face. It's not the damn kid's fault. He reached into his back pocket for a handkerchief and wiped his nose. Damned if any stranger is going to see me like this. Then he tucked it away and headed into the dining room.
00000
McCormick watched him take his place at the table, moving in a slow, almost formal way that was the strangest thing of all about the man since he'd returned from the hospital. It was as though he'd had fifteen years added to his life, not taken away. He could put it on the list of things that he wanted to ask Dr. Neely about Monday.
Careful, that. Just what are you trying to accomplish there? Hoping the doc will say he can't be left alone for a while longer? If he wants you gone, you'll go. And you'd damn well better not make him choose between you and a sanitarium.
McCormick felt the flush of guilt steal over him, and suddenly remembered he'd left the ketchup in the kitchen. No meatloaf without ketchup. He was up and away and catching his breath leaning against the sink, he hoped before the judge could notice there was something wrong.
And that's where he was standing when the shot rang out.
00000
Hardcastle was in the kitchen a moment later, shotgun in hand, moving fast with a look of angry confusion on his face.
"What the hell—?"
"Get down dammit," the kid was sitting on the floor, amid shards of glass, in front of the sink. "The light's still on."
The judge dropped to the floor, poking the muzzle of the gun up against the switch and hooking it down with the site. He edged across the floor.
"How many?"
"One shooter, so far. A rifle, maybe a .223. If this isn't a goddamn grassy knoll, I don't know what is." Even in the near darkness, Hardcastle could make out the kid's grin.
"I'm gonna go out the side door," Hardcastle said quietly, "do a little reconnoiter."
"The hell you are. He's got a rifle. You've got a shotgun."
"I've got the element of surprise," the judge reasoned insistently.
"No, I think he does. We don't even know how many 'he's' there are out there," McCormick reasoned right back at him. "You call the cops." Mark paused for a moment; they both listened. Nothing. He heard the kid exhale a sigh. "Anyway, I think he's gone. Call Frank. And turn the light back on, but stay away from the window."
Hardcastle made his way back across the room, staying low, and reached up to flick the switch on. He turned for a moment, puzzled as to why the kid was still sitting there, not heading toward the relative safety of the hallway.
Hardcastle thought it was probably the cock-eyed grin that had misled him.
"It hurts too damn much to be serious, Judge; trust me," McCormick lifted his left hand briefly, from where he'd been clutching his right arm, to look at what was underneath. "Yeah, just a scrape. Really. Will ya go ahead and call Frank?"
00000
Forty minutes later, Harper was on the front doorstep. The judge answered before the first knock, looked around warily, and pulled him inside.
"What the hell is this about a shooting, Milt? Why didn't you call it in?"
"I think the kid wanted to say 'I told you so,' to you personally." Hardcastle closed and latched the door behind the lieutenant. "Dammit, Frank, I've never seen anybody so happy to get shot before in my life."
"How bad is it?" Frank said with growing alarm.
"Well, not exactly a scratch," the judge put his hand to his forehead, "more like a gouge, you'd say. But he's right; there was nothing to do but clean it up and put a bandage on it." Hardcastle led him toward the den. "And none of the neighbors called it in, either, huh?"
"Can't hardly blame 'em for that," McCormick looked up at them from the chair alongside the desk. The grin hadn't quite left him, though there was a shade of grimace to it as he shifted around to face them. "It's kind of a thing they've had to get used to around here. Anyway, Frank," the grin was infectiously open now, "how 'bout the truck? Think we got some probable cause now? Maybe the Glendale PD ought to take a look at it."
"People have taken a shot at him before," Frank cocked a thumb at Hardcastle.
"Me? Why?"
"Because you don't have the sense God gave a mule," McCormick rubbed his temple with his left hand and then jabbed the air in the judge's general direction, "and you're always getting in the way of people who shoot people who get in their way. That's why."
"But they were shooting at you," Hardcastle replied.
"But I'm just a first-year law student. I don't think they're coming after me because I'm breaking the curve," Mark put his head back on the chair and closed his eyes for a moment. "I got in the way of one of your bullets this time." He paused for a moment, then lifted his head and looked at Frank. "So, we gonna investigate or not?"
"We?" Frank asked mildly.
"Yeah, you, me, and the Honorable Milton C. Hardcastle—the guy who never gets anybody mad at him." The grin had taken a testy edge to it. "Dammit, Frank. I want to know why . . . and I want to know how." The grin was gone. What was left was a look of pure need. "They took fifteen years, and now I think they're coming back for the rest."
"Yeah," Frank nodded. "You told me so, huh?" There was no humor in the comment.
The kid nodded back.
"I'll call in a team." Frank reached for the phone.
"The guy's gone, Frank," Hardcastle nudged his way back into the conversation. "All you're gonna find out there tonight are some more footprints, a casing, and maybe another match, and all of those will be easier to find in the morning. Let's keep the mars lights off the property and let the neighbors get some rest tonight."
"So where do you want to start?"
"The file," Mark was insistent. "I know it's not much but it must mean something. Why did you go to Glendale? And who's Henry?"
Frank watched Hardcastle, who'd reached across the desk for the folder without questioning how Mark knew what it contained. He opened it again, laying it out on the desk before them.
He looked down at what little was written there, then back up at the other two. "If I guess right, do you think I'll be able to tell the difference?" he asked, with more than a twinge of worry in his voice.
"I dunno, Judge," all the angry edge on the younger man was gone now, replaced by concern, "but I really think you gotta try."
Hardcastle gave him a long look, then he stared down at the scribbled notes. "Well, I've known some guys named Henry."
"Good," McCormick nodded his encouragement. "You should make a list of them. It might be somebody from way back, who got in touch with you because they were in some kind of trouble. Maybe someone you knew well enough to just put down a first name."
Frank hoped the doubt he was experiencing wasn't readily apparent on his face. The kid sounded like he was grasping at straws and Milt's face was a study in hopeless bewilderment.
But then, very suddenly, it wasn't.
"It's not an 'S'," the judge announced, quietly, but with a great deal of certainty.
"What?" came from both of the other men almost simultaneously.
"It's a five." He turned the folder around to face them and pout his finger on the spot. "It's 5 1721. It's a phone number."
It was Mark's turn to look befuddled. "But—"
"Glendale 5-1721," Hardcastle was smiling. "It's an exchange."
McCormick winced. "We don't have those anymore, Judge."
But now Frank was smiling, too. "Hubbard five, thirty-one hundred."
"That's right," the judge grinned, "you started out doing beat in the Hollenbeck district."
"Ten years," Frank said, "I know all those numbers."
McCormick was looked back and forth between the two men. "Exchanges?"
"Yeah," Frank nodded, "it could be. I still do it sometimes. They're a lot easier than remembering seven numbers." He turned to McCormick. "Come on, Mark, you're not that young. Don't you remember your home phone exchange from when you were a kid?"
A moment of awkward silence followed. Oddly, it was Hardcastle who caught the drift first. "Well, we didn't have one either, growing up," he spouted out without any apparent embarrassment. "Didn't even get a radio until after the REA, and I was almost out of high school by then."
"Juniper," McCormick said quietly. "That was the exchange down at the drugstore. I haven't thought about that for a long time." He looked at Hardcastle quizzically, "You still remember them that way?"
"I dunno," the judge shrugged. "I did fifteen years ago."
"Then you still do." McCormick nodded once, decisively. He reached for the phone as he glanced down at the notation one more time. He searched for a moment for the 'g' and the 'l' then punched the rest of the numbers in without hesitation. When he finished he hit the intercom button and recradled the receiver. The three men listened to the rings.
Four . . . five. McCormick frowned, and started to reach for the phone again just as an answering machine picked up. "This is Symnetech, Inc., research division. Please leave your name, number and a brief message after the tone, and we will get back to you as soon as we can." He hit the disconnect before the beep even finished.
Frank's eyebrows went up. He looked over at Hardcastle, not really expecting to see any glimmers of recognition. McCormick hadn't even bothered. He was staring down at the phone, deep in concentration.
"I'll have to cross-reference it through the files. It's not ringing any bells for me right off. But there's a ton of stuff down there that I've never even looked at. Maybe you could run it through your databases, Frank. I don't think anyone's going to be answering the phone there this weekend but if I can get an address . . ."
Just what he was planning to do with that information was left to the imagination of the two older men, who were both now staring at him, Frank with mild nervousness, and Hardcastle with growing aggravation.
McCormick was caught for a moment in the judge's glare. Then he glared right back and said, "Come on, Hardcase. All that top-secret, hush-hush stuff with the files ended about two years ago. You've practically force-fed me the damn things. After all that, I'm sure as hell not going back to that 'need-to-know' status. This is too important."
Frank was chuckling, "He's right Milt, between the two of you, you're like a walking encyclopedia of West Coast criminality."
"The files are locked," the judge pointed out stubbornly.
McCormick leaned to the side a little and reached into his own pocket. He tossed his key ring down on the desk. "March, last year. You had me make copies." There was an edge of belligerence that covered over any pain that might have been underneath.
"Then why—"
"Not the desk, though. That's yours," McCormick conceded. "But that file's old news. That guy doesn't exist anymore."
Frank had been watching the judge's face. Now his eyes snapped back to the younger man, and he saw in an instant that Mark hadn't meant it as hyperbole. To completely reinvent yourself, to do it for someone else's approval, and then to lose that.
Frank opened his mouth, not quite sure of what he was going to say, but wanting to defuse the situation before it became irreversible. The judge spoke before he could.
"You know, that file's not all bad."
McCormick's eyebrows went up a little at this unexpected admission. "No," he replied, appearing a little less tense. "I didn't know. I've never read it."
Frank sat back, feeling the crisis pass. He rubbed his hand over his face. "Okay, so . . . you two," he put a very slight emphasis on the word, "will see if you can come up with any background information here. I'll check it out, at least try to get us some names and an address." He got to his feet slowly.
"And the truck, Frank," Mark added a reminder.
"Oh, yeah, and on the weekend before a holiday. Glendale PD is gonna thank me, for sure—not enough staff and too much mayhem. Don't count on anything from them real soon."
Mark rose, too, and saw him to the door.
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Hardcastle sat at his desk, willing to let the kid be the proxy host, and not sure exactly why. The whole thing about the files, hell, he'd taken a look at them that first day back and hadn't recognized much at all. Now to find out this was yet another piece of McCormick's turf. He'd just snapped. And then to see the effect his words had had.
He was still sitting there, a few moments later, still staring down at the keys that lay on the desk, when McCormick returned.
"Sorry," the younger man said, as he reached forward and scooped them up, weighing them for a moment in his hand before shoving them back in his pocket.
"Sorry for what?" Hardcastle grumbled mildly.
"For whatever it is that I keep doing to piss you off." Mark flashed a brief, small smile. "Sort of a general, all-purpose 'sorry'. . . But don't expect another one too soon; you've been a real pain in the—"
"Yeah," Hardcastle heaved a sigh and got up out of the chair. "Maybe we should start on those files."
Mark's grin was irrepressible. "Now you're cookin'."
00000
Hardcastle's brief startlement did not pass unnoticed by Mark, but it seemed the judge had taken some vow of good behavior, so he merely followed the younger man down the stairs and even allowed him to fish his keys out again and open the locks.
For his part, McCormick tried not to be too obvious in his familiarity. Though it pretty quickly became apparent that someone needed to know how things were organized, and it wasn't the judge.
Mark brushed absentmindedly at a cobweb that had collected between the top of one cabinet and the wall, then muttered his comment on the obvious, "We haven't been down here that much lately."
"You've been busy with school."
McCormick shot him a glance as he pulled open the first drawer. "Yeah," he admitted, chagrined at how close to the truth the judge had come with the comment.
"What was I doing, then?" the older man asked curiously.
"Dunno," but he couldn't help it; the rest came out before he could stop himself, "You weren't supposed to be doing this without me. You're right when you said it was dangerous."
"I was a cop before I was a judge, you know."
"Even cops have back up."
"And you were mine?"
"Yeah," McCormick said simply, as though there wasn't anything else that needed to be said about that.
He lifted out a stack of files and set them on the worktable behind them. Then opened another drawer, selecting, pulling, stacking. By the time he was done, there were at least thirty of them.
"Mobsters with business ties, businessmen who are embezzlers, investment scams—can you think of anything else?" He pulled up two chairs and sat himself down in one of them, taking a file off the top of the nearest stack.
Hardcastle shook his head. He sat down in the other chair, still staring at the piles. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the cabinets. "How many are there, altogether?"
"Lots," McCormick replied absently, as he skimmed the contents of the first file. After a moment he glanced up at the older man, frowning. "You didn't have any of these . . . before?"
Hardcastle took a long slow look at the cabinets, and finally pointed toward the one on the end. "That was in my chambers. I keep my current cases in the top drawer, my lunch in the bottom. And the telephone directory."
Mark glanced aside to where he was pointing. "The bottom drawer is Reno mobsters; the top one is, um, drug dealers—A through M." He reached for a second file.
"Oh," Hardcastle nodded, looking a little self-conscious. Then there was a pause before he added, "It seems kinda . . . obsessive."
McCormick was deep into the second file. Turning a page, he looked up again. "Yeah," he conceded. "A little. . . .maybe." He looked around at the file cabinets, as though he was also seeing them for the first time. "It was your life," he added quietly. "Mine, too."
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Hardcastle tried to settled down and tackle his share of the files, though the dates were jarring and the information almost completely unfamiliar. Every once in a while something grabbed his attention him, and one time he heard himself say, "So that's what happened to—" before he caught himself. The kid had already looked up.
"What?"
"Oh, a guy," the judge said, "from a couple of years . . . from eighteen years back," he corrected himself.
McCormick leaned over and looked at the file, then frowned. "We got him already. He's still awaiting trial, though. That's probably why you haven't re-filed it yet."
He saw the kid sit back and rub the bridge of his nose wearily. Hardcastle looked down at his own watch, then up again. The unfinished stack had dwindled to a handful and neither one of them had made any exciting discoveries.
"It's past two," Hardcastle pointed out. "Maybe we should knock it off for the night. It's been a long day."
McCormick sat back in his chair, closing his eyes for a moment. "Yeah," he exhaled. "It has. He looked aside at the stacks they'd gone through. "I'll re-file these tomorrow."
"Nah," the judge shook his head. "I'll do it. It'll keep me busy."
McCormick looked a little doubtful.
"Hell," the judge shrugged. "It's my system; I ought to be able to figure it out."
Mark's laugh was abrupt, and short. He tamped it down but was still smiling when he choked out, "That'll be more than I could ever do. It's . . . unique," he added, with one last look around the room as he stood up.
The two men plodded up the stairs, but, to the judge's surprise, McCormick headed for the kitchen, not the front door.
"Just a snack," the younger man shrugged, when he realized he was being stared at. "File reading makes me hungry and, anyway, I never got any meatloaf. You go on to bed."
"You'll lock up on your way out?" The judge asked, but before he could turn to go, he caught something in McCormick's expression that made him look harder. He finally said, "You're gonna hang out down here all night, huh. You think that guy might come back?"
"He might. But we don't both have to stay up. You should get some sleep." The kid frowned. "Neely said something about rest, I think."
"I don't need a bodyguard," Hardcastle protested.
"Hah," McCormick snorted. "You don't need a keeper. You do need a bodyguard. Somebody's trying to kill you, Judge." The kid was fixing him with a hard, determined stare. Finally he added, "Just till it's light out. I'll take a nap tomorrow. I'm not gonna be able to sleep anyway."
After a long moment, Hardcastle asked, "You don't think I'm crazy, do you?"
"No worse than usual," Mark replied without hesitation.
The judge frowned. "So, how crazy is that?"
McCormick laughed again. This time it was lighter, and his answer had the ring of conviction to it when he said, "Just crazy enough."