Snapshots: Rolling Thunder
Part 2
Most of his stuff was packed up. There were only loose ends to be dealt with. The lunch invitation from Jenkins had been a welcome distraction. Hardcastle wouldn't have said that about many of his judicial colleagues, he didn't see eye-to-eye with some of them, but Hank was a down-to-earth guy.
"Barney's Beanery, huh?" Jenkins said dubiously, hands in his pockets as they stood just outside the door. "I'd kind of hoped you'd let me take you someplace classier, your retirement and all. It's supposed to be an occasion."
"It's not until the day after tomorrow." Hardcastle opened the door and ushered the other man in. "Anyway, I like hotdogs."
"Louise'll skin me if she finds out I've had one." Jenkin's made a doleful face. "The cholesterol, ya know."
"Can't live forever." Hardcastle shrugged as they were shown to a table.
They settled in, temporarily occupied with their menus. Jenkins squinted down at his for a moment and then pulled out his glasses.
"I envy you, Milt," he said, glancing up. "Walking away from it all while you're still alive and kicking. No more planning committee meetings. Fishing in the middle of the week."
"Fishing?" Hardcastle's smile was slightly wolfish. "Yeah, you could say that." He leaned forward slightly. "I haven't told anybody about this yet, but I've got some post-retirement plans."
He explained in loose and general terms, but he thought it was all fairly cogent—especially the part about having a hired hand.
He hadn't noticed the expression on Jenkins' face at first, as it slid slowly into disbelief.
"I thought you'd given up on all that do-it yourself rehab stuff. I mean, that last one, what was his name—?"
"Beale," Hardcastle said, tight-lipped.
"Yeah, him."
"Miscalculation. Won't make that mistake again."
Jenkins cocked his head. "You mean you've already got another one lined up?"
Hardcastle gave that a considered nod. "Six months out, this time. Keeping his nose clean and everything."
"So, what makes you sure this is the—?"
"This one spits in my eye every time I get near him." Hardcastle grinned.
Jenkins wasn't looking convinced.
"See, Beale, he was a pretty smooth operator: 'Yes Judge, no Judge.' You never know where you're at with somebody like that." Hardcastle's grin was surprisingly durable. "But this kid's so full of piss and vinegar that he can't even pretend to stand me."
"That's the guy you're going to get to be your hired hand?"
"Yup, just gotta convince him it's in his best interest."
"I don't know. Sounds pretty iffy."
"Ya know, Hank, I'm not looking for someone to be my buddy. This'll be strictly business. My business. He's gonna fetch and carry, do some of the heavy lifting, maybe pick up a little discipline along the way—learn not to take the short cuts." Hardcastle frowned pensively at his menu. "He could use some of that." He looked up suddenly, and caught the other man's equally pensive expression.
Jenkins cleared his throat slightly and then plunged in. "I heard the Commission was still giving you a hard time about Beale."
Hardcastle shrugged. "What the hell else can they do to me? I'm retiring."
On that definitive note, Jenkins let the issue drop. Hardcastle didn't feel like he'd convinced his friend of anything, but at least his idea's reception hadn't been as frosty as some he'd gotten lately. Even Dalem had sounded baffled by his choice.
"That one's a loser." Those had been the man's exact words, when he'd told him he wanted to keep tabs on McCormick. And Dalem had been hell-fired eager on Friday to share the news that his parolee had backslid.
Hardcastle had felt more than a twinge of disappointment at that announcement. And even though it might've provided just the right lever to get McCormick on board with his plan, somehow he hadn't been all that sorry to find out that Dalem had been mistaken. Still, considering the reception he'd gotten from McCormick Friday afternoon, Hardcastle thought he might have been a tad premature announcing his choice to Jenkins. He drew himself up silently.
No, this is the one. Just got to pound a little sense into that thick skull of his. He thought he meant that metaphorically. Maybe.
The rest of the meal was spent on relatively neutral ground and finished up with mutual promises to get out to their favorite shared trout stream sometime soon, with Hardcastle now almost a man of leisure. He smiled and nodded at this, keeping the precise nature of the rest of his plans to himself.
Eventually they caught a cab back to the courthouse—Hank to his afternoon session and Milt to sort out the last details of his remaining work load. He'd almost made it back to his chambers when Ruthie, one of the secretaries, tagged him.
"Judge Hardcastle, I'm glad I found you. Mr. Dalem from the parole office called. He was looking for you, said it was important."
Hardcastle frowned. "He say what it was about?"
There was a quick shake of the woman's head as she handed over the note with the incoming message—just "Re: McCormick. Call me ASAP."
He wasn't sure why the fodder he'd taken on at Barney's had abruptly turned to lead in his stomach. Sudden news from the parole office was never good but he'd taken last Friday's in stride. He let himself into his chambers, finding the phone among the boxes which were packed and ready to go. He glanced down at the note again and dialed the number himself.
Dalem's secretary picked up. Hardcastle had a distinct recollection of her as an attractive blond with a sparkling personality to match. There was no lilt in her voice today. She was grimly terse as she routed his call back to her boss.
"Milt? Hated to bother you and all, but I thought you'd want to know. It's McCormick again."
"What now? Dammit, he went out of there half-cocked Friday. Don't tell me he did something stupid."
"I think this goes way beyond stupid. He pulled another car job."
There was a pause from Dalem's end. Hardcastle thought the man's tone was more self-satisfied than disappointed, and the silence was an unspoken "I told you so". He wasn't buying it, at least not yet.
"Why the hell would he do a thing like that?" he growled, more to himself than to the man who was officially McCormick's keeper.
"You're surprised?" Dalem said, and this time there was a definite chortle to it. "I figured it was only a matter of time with that one."
"Details," Hardcastle said brusquely. "What happened?"
"There was a break-in overnight at an automotive research facility. Stupid move, the place had heavy-duty security. He took a prototype car—"
"Allegedly took."
Dalem grunted. "Not much 'allegedly' to this one. He was caught in the act."
"Arrested at the scene?" Hardcastle asked grimly. This was way more lever than he'd wanted.
"Ah . . . not exactly. They picked him up at his place this morning."
Hardcastle felt one eyebrow going up in puzzlement. "So what do they have on him? You sounded pretty certain."
Another pause, as though this part wasn't giving Dalem quite as much pleasure, and then he said, bluffly, "One of the cops at the scene got a pretty good look at him."
"Just a look, not an arrest?" Hardcastle asked, trying to suppress his impatience. "How close could he have been?"
"Real close . . . they said your boy yanked him out of a crashed cruiser."
"Wait a sec—"
"It was flight to evade arrest, Milt. Add that onto the rest. And the officer in question might have been seriously injured."
"You mean he crashed his car, and McCormick stopped and made sure he was okay?"
"Well . . . yeah."
"And the officer is sure about the ID—I mean, it was night time, dark out there."
"There was plenty of light," Dalem said. "The damn cruiser was on fire."
There was a pause, and then Hardcastle heard a long low whistle escape from his own lips and then, "It could have been murder one."
"I think that's how the DA's looking at it. They're not even bothering with the parole violation end of it right now. It's peanuts compared to the bill of indictment. "
"But no arraignment set so far? They just picked him up today, you said?"
"This morning, yeah, early."
There was puzzlement in Dalem's tone, and then dead silence when Hardcastle replied, more in a muttered aside to himself, "Then it might not be too late."
He extracted himself from the conversation with as much haste as was decent. He was suddenly glad he hadn't gone into the specifics of his original plan when he'd talked to Dalem the Friday before.
This was a lever, all right, the kind Archimedes would have used to move the earth, but he wasn't so sure anymore that he wanted to wield it. The part about going back to pull the cop out of the burning car fit the profile he'd already mentally composed, but no rescue would have been needed if the damn kid hadn't gone and done something stupid again.
He must've had some kind of reason.
Hardcastle knew he wasn't going to get that from the DA. And he couldn't go near anyone else involved in the case, not yet. Ideally, he'd have to get them to come to him.
He picked up the phone again, this time dialing Willa Ann at the scheduling desk. She picked up promptly, sounding surprised to be getting a call from his extension.
"If it's that Diebolt case, I've already reassigned it."
"Nah, kiddo, no problem there. Whoever you dumped that on is welcome to it. I hoped you picked one of the young guys so you don't wind up having to pass it on again."
This got him a small laugh, which is what he was angling for. Time to pop the question.
"You've got an arraignment to schedule, a guy named McCormick, Mark." He heard some papers being shuffled. "Might not be there just yet."
"No, no here it is." She sounded mystified. "How'd you know about that one?"
"A little bird and all that," Hardcastle said blithely. "Whaddaya say we put that one in my book for tomorrow morning?"
"But it's way down at the bottom here. I've got a stack ahead of it. Besides, I thought we'd agreed not to put anything new on your docket. Only two more days," she reminded him cheerfully, as though he might have forgotten.
He gritted his teeth but kept his patter light, with just a hint of cajolery. "I know the guy, sent him up a few years back. Besides, I hear the case is pretty air-tight. Wouldn't surprise me if he pleads guilty. I might be able to tidy one up for you, and you know I hate just sitting around twiddling my thumbs."
This last bit didn't need any selling. It was the gold-plated truth. That and the possibility of getting one more case out of her ever-increasing pile was enough to seal the deal.
"California v. McCormick. 3 pm. It's yours." Then, after a pause, "There aren't going to be any objections from defense council on this—you having sentenced him previously."
"Probably," he sighed, "eventually . . . but, hey," he brightened, "it's just an arraignment. He pleas, and that's that. Trust me, kiddo, even Clarence Darrow wouldn't expect to get bond for this guy. He's a two-time loser still on parole."
That all this went against his earlier promise of a possible quick resolution was lost in the thank you's and further wishes for a happy retirement. He hung the phone up still not certain of what he'd do with his prize. That depended on a lot of things he didn't know yet.
Motive. Of the three aspects of this crime, this was the one that still stood unelucidated. He would have sworn Friday afternoon that mad as McCormick had been he had also been shrouded in the mantle of honest self-justification. Of course Beale had sounded like a reformed man, too.
Good thing you're getting out of this now. You've lost your touch.
No, he didn't believe that. Beale had just been way smarter than your average con—that and an agile liar. McCormick seemed to have neither of those traits, at least not that he'd noticed during the kid's other trial. Hardcastle shook his head and put the phone back on the desk. Further investigations into the background of the case would have to wait until he had a reason to be interested. If anyone on the Judicial Commission got wind of this, he thought the case would be reassigned so fast that Willa Ann would get a nasty paper cut.
00000
It might not have gone down as a textbook arraignment. Certainly no one from the Judicial Commission would have seen it that way. The accused hadn't even gotten around to making a plea. Nor had he accepted Hardcastle's offer, made in chambers, further evidence that the kid was no Beale—either in smarts or self-control. Didn't he realize he was looking at ten years? Maybe more, if the DA had their way with a request for serving the sentences serially and a couple of parole violations tacked on for good measure.
But McCormcik had offered a motive. It was one Hardcastle had had an inkling of the night before, when he'd reviewed the indictment and encountered Cody Industries. There'd been a recent mention of the company and its CEO in the Sunday Times in relation to the death of a car designer. Of course it might have meant anything—a piece of industrial espionage taking advantage of an already chaotic situation—but the kid's version was a lot more satisfying way to arrange the pieces of the puzzle.
Now he had Martin Cody's file in front of him, garnered from the county's records and supplemented by what other jurisdictions hadn't been able to act on. The file had been more than interesting. He'd spend most of the late afternoon perusing it, in between bursts of packing books and papers and contemplating some changes to his short range retirement plans. What were the odds that McCormick would invent an accusation against the man that already fit his previous M.O.?
Alleged M.O., Hardcastle corrected himself automatically. He got up, gathered the file and the extra papers under his arm, and cast a last look around at his now nearly-empty chambers. He owed one more day of service to the LA County Superior Court but, somehow, he didn't think he'd be back. He'd written up the court order—a carefully-worded judicial stay for the case of California v. McCormick. Then he'd waited until he could be certain that all of the day people had left. This would be a little tricky, and best presented as a fait accompli.
He clicked off the lights and departed.
00000
He couldn't believe this lever wasn't big enough. There was McCormick, behind bars looking depressed as hell, being offered a way out of this mess—even a way to get some justice for his dead friend—and still the guy seemed reluctant. Hardcastle was running low on patience.
"This is what you'd call a limited time offer, sport." He didn't specify exactly who was running short of time to make this thing work.
The younger man was turned away, sprawled on his bunk. For a long moment there was no response. Then, almost suddenly and without turning to face him, McCormick said simply, "Okay, I'll do it."
That was it, no argument, no request for further details, either about how they'd pursue Cody, or anything else after. Hardcastle controlled his surprise. He'd expected more argument. He'd actually been looking forward to it. This was just a little too precipitous after all that stonewalling.
"You're gonna talk to your lawyer first."
"Why? I've already decided."
"Not without your attorney to give the whole think a look-see first."
"Miller? He's a chipmunk for God's sake. Anyway, you're right, if we're going to go after Cody, we need to get started." He was sitting up now. His face furrowed suddenly as if he'd just realized where he still was. "I don't want to wait until tomorrow."
"You won't have to. I called him before I came down here. He's on his way in."
The reaction he got was worth having scouted out Miller's home number from the on-call member of the public defender's office. There was a pause as McCormick mastered his obvious startlement.
"Must be nice to be a judge," he said dryly.
"It is sometimes," Hardcastle replied with a grin. He glanced down at his wrist watch. "Stick around. I'll get the guard."
He spared one quick look at McCormick's bemusement. Things were obviously moving too fast for the kid. He strode off without waiting for a reply and returned a few moments later with an equally baffled guard. It was only a matter of minutes before they found Miller up in the interview room they'd been assigned.
He handed McCormick and the papers over. "You two discuss it. I'll be out here." He gestured to the vacant hallway.