She looked up at us from the tile floor, removing her hand from the
brush to push her bangs from her forehead. The brush stayed entangled
in poor Griffey's coat. "I was just wondering whether I should show
this to you. I thought he felt a little crusty downstairs when I was
petting him, but it looks like he's actually got something dried on his
coat back here."
Johnson knelt down and looked more closely at the side of Griffey's
hip. Then he reached into an interior pocket of his suit jacket,
removed a latex glove, and slipped it over his right hand.
"Do you mind giving us a second, Ms. Carney?"
Tara seemed surprised by the request but left the bathroom, closing the
door behind her.
"Looks like clay or something," Johnson explained, "like he brushed up
against it here on his side."
"Shit. We should have gotten the crime lab over here immediately when
the Fletchers called."
I was beginning to panic. Why the hell hadn't Johnson been on top of
this? "Wasn't obvious," he said, responding to the unspoken question.
"Until you're certain what you're dealing with, it's hard to decide
what kind of resources to put into it. Considering the small chance of
any evidence off the dog, plus the likelihood that we're dealing with a
runaway wife, and it's a tough call."
It made sense, but it didn't excuse the fact that we nearly allowed
Tara Carney to take the source of what might be our best piece of
evidence so far and soak him in a bathtub.
Johnson flaked some of the beige paste from Griffey's coat into an
evidence bag, then marked it with his name and the date using a Sharpie
pen.
Shit. What else had we missed? "I think we should go ahead and get
the crime lab out here and search around Taylor's Ferry. Everything
about this feels bad."
"Your call," he said, pulling out his cell phone.
This new gig was going to take some getting used to.
Two.
By 7 a.m. the next morning, I was watching my first Major Crimes Unit
case unfold on television. Nothing like an attractive, professional,
missing white woman to satisfy the hunger of the viewing masses.
I sat in the eighth-floor conference room of the Multnomah County
District Attorney's Office, location of the office's only TV set,
flipping channels in a futile attempt to track the coverage. Out of
principle, I boycotted the Fox affiliate for running the tagline case
of a real-life Cinderella? in a graphic beneath the talking head. I
finally gave up and settled on the local morning show, which seemed to
be covering the story in the most detail.
Cut to some guy named Jake Spottiswoode, so-called field correspondent,
also known as the kid right out of college who gets sent with his
Columbia Gore-Tex jacket into the rain.
"Good morning, Gloria. Behind me in southwest Portland is the home of
Dr. Townsend Easterbrook and his missing wife,
Administrative Law Judge Clarissa Easterbrook. Dr. Easter-brook
reported the mysterious disappearance yesterday evening, shortly after
returning from a day of surgery at OHSU.
"Residents of this quiet neighborhood are fearing the worst," Gore-Tex
continued, "since learning that one of Judge Easter-brook's shoes was
discovered in the street on Taylor's Ferry Road last night. That
discovery was particularly ominous given that the shoe was found only
half a mile from where her dog was found earlier in the night, alone
but still on his leash. The community is helping police in the search
effort and say they still hold out hope that Judge Easterbrook will be
found safe and unharmed. We've been told that the family will be
coming outside any minute to make a statement."
"Jake, what can you tell us about what Clarissa Easterbrook might have
been doing before she disappeared? Was she walking the dog?" Watching
Gloria Flick lean forward and dramatically furrow her brow, I
remembered why I never watch this show. Gloria Flick was annoying as
hell.
police had refused to rule out any possibilities. Although this was
formally a missing persons case, they were moving forward on the
assumption that foul play might be involved. Trying to fill air time
before the press conference, the rain-soaked rookie correspondent
touched upon Clarissa's position with the city. "We're hearing,
Gloria, that Clarissa Easterbrook, as an administrative law judge, is
not the kind of judge that many of us would envision, in a courthouse,
presiding over trials. Rather, she hears appeals from the
administrative decisions of city agencies. Because many of those
matters are considered routine and, in fact, somewhat bureaucratic,
police are discouraging the media from speculating that Judge
Easterbrook's disappearance could be related to her official
position."
The viewing public was spared any further attempt to explain the boring
work of an administrative law judge when Clarissa Easterbrook's family
assumed its place behind a podium that had been set up in the
Easterbrook driveway.
Joining Tara and Townsend were an older couple I imagined were
Clarissa's parents, along with a woman I didn't recognize. Townsend
tentatively approached the mike. Make that about ten mikes. Unlike
Tara, he had changed clothes, but the bags under his eyes were every
bit as pronounced.
As the attending surgeon at the state's teaching hospital, Townsend was
probably used to speaking to a crowd. But today he seemed focused on
merely making it through the notes he carried to the podium. His voice
lacked affect, and he didn't look up once from his reading:
"My wife, Clarissa Easterbrook, has not been seen since six o'clock
yesterday morning. She disappeared somewhere between then and last
night at approximately six-thirty p.m." when I returned home. We
believe she was wearing a pink silk turtleneck sweater, charcoal-gray
pants, and black loafers, one of which was found on Taylor's Ferry
Drive early this morning. Our dog was discovered last night in the
same area, near the Chart House restaurant. We are asking anyone who
may have seen her, or seen anything in that vicinity that might be
related to her disappearance, to please call the police immediately.
Clarissa, we love you and we miss you, and we want you to come home to
us safe.
"Behind me are Clarissa's sister, Tara Carney; her parents, Mel and
Alice Carney; and her dearest friend, Susan Kerr. On behalf of all of
us, I'd like to thank everyone who is helping in this search effort.
Members of the Portland Police Bureau and the Multnomah County District
Attorney's Office were here late last night, and the media have been
great about getting Clarissa's picture out there and asking for
information. We're very grateful for all the support and concern that
has been shown for Clarissa and our family. Thank you again."
Whoever wrote the script was savvy enough to know how to play the game
of political in
stitutions. Appear supportive of the police department
and the DA's office early on, and you'll have all the more leverage
down the road if you threaten to turn. Reporters were shouting out
questions now, but there wasn't much for Townsend to add. Yes, it was
certainly possible that something might have happened to her while she
was walking the dog, but the police were not ruling out other
possibilities. No, there hadn't been any ransom demands or other
communications about the disappearance.
Once the family retreated into the house, the station ran more pictures
of Clarissa and repeated the description of her clothing. Nordstrom
had come through. From the montage of photographs at a picnic with
Townsend, at Cannon Beach with Griffey, on the lap of a shopping-mall
Santa Claus with Tara I began to feel I knew this woman. She was aging
gracefully, keeping her hair blond but neatly bobbed, allowing the
wrinkles to show beneath a light dusting of makeup. And in every
picture she had the same big, generous smile that had greeted me the
one time I had met her at a women's bar conference a couple of years
ago. I couldn't bear to watch.
As I was clicking the TV off, Russell Frist stuck his perfectly
salt-and-peppered head into the conference room. "Welcome back,
Kincaid, and welcome to the Unit. The boss tells me you're in the
thick of things already."
The District Attorney must have called Frist first thing this morning.
Recently appointed supervisor of the Major Crimes Unit, my new boss had
a reputation for screaming at other lawyers and making them cry, but
also for being a good prosecutor. I had vowed to keep an open mind
about him, but sitting there beneath his gaze, I found myself
intimidated. At six foot three and a good two-twenty, Frist put in
enough time at the gym to test the seams of his well-cut suit.
It wasn't surprising that Frist referred to the trial unit that
prosecuted all person felonies as "the Unit." He'd been handling major
crimes for at least fifteen years, so other kinds of cases had no doubt
stopped mattering to him long ago.
"Looks like it," I said. "When he sent me out to the Easter-brooks'
last night for some hand-holding, I don't think either one of us
thought it was going to turn into something like this, literally
overnight."
"Well, we should talk. Give me about fifteen minutes, then meet in my
office?"
Fifteen minutes wasn't enough time to get any actual work done, so I
continued making my way through the pile of mail that had accumulated
over the past month. As un pampered county employees, we usually have
to take care of our own office moves when we change rotations, but
someone had been nice enough to relocate my things from my old office
down the hall at the Drug and Vice Division to what used to be Frist's
office in major crimes.
Everything, that was, except for my black leather, high-backed swivel
chair. A good office chair is nearly impossible to come by when you
work for the government. Most of the chairs around here had ceased
being adjustable years ago and had funky-smelling upholstery fit for
the county's HAZMAT team. About a year ago, I had spent four full
months sucking up to the facilities manager, begging for a decent
chair. The campaign was not my proudest moment; let's just say it
involved me, a lunchtime knitting class, and a decade's supply of ugly
booties for the woman's baby.
Now someone had taken my vacation as an opportunity to run off with the
spoils of my labor. The culprit clearly lacked two essential pieces of
information. First, I would stop at absolutely nothing to get that
chair back. And second, I'd have no problem proving ownership. The
day I got no, make that earned- my chair, I committed vandalism against
county property by scratching my initials in a secret spot and vowing
we'd be together forever.
But for now, I was stuck with a sorry-looking lump of stinky blue tweed
on casters.
Otherwise, the new office was a step up. In my old office, I had an
L-shaped yellow metal desk with a cork board hutch. Now I had an
L-shaped gray metal desk with a cork board hutch, plus a matching gray
file cabinet all to myself. Whoever had done the move had replicated
my old office (minus my special chair) to a T, all the way down to the
two pictures stuck in the corner of my cork board: one of Vinnie
gnawing on his rubber Gumby doll, the other of my parents in front of
their tree on my mom's last Christmas.
I met Frist as requested in his new corner office, legal pad and pen in
hand, ready for a fresh start in a new unit, with a promotion I had
wanted since I joined the office. It took most attorneys five to seven
years of good work and shameless ass kissing to get into MCU, and I'd
done it in less than three with my pride largely intact. Given my
Stanford law degree and three years in the Southern District of New
York at the nation's most prestigious U.S. Attorney's Office, some
would say I was actually running behind.
I took a seat across from Frist, trying not to think about the last
time I was there with the office's previous tenant.
True to his reputation, my new boss skipped the small talk and got down
to business. "I thought we should touch base since you're new to the
Unit and I'm still getting used to this supervision gig. You know the
deal: we handle all non domestic person felonies, basically murders,
rapes, and aggravated assaults. Robberies we treat like property
crimes and send down to the general felony unit. You can decide
whether you want to bring any files over from your old DVD caseload,
but I'd recommend against it. You'll have your hands full enough here
without having to juggle Drug and Vice."
It took some concentration to focus on the substance of what Frist was
saying. He had one of those deep voices you have to tuck your chin
into your chest to impersonate, a common practice around the DA's
office. He sounded like that antiwar governor from Vermont who ran for
president, but this proud conservative ex-marine would never oppose a
war, let alone go to Vermont. Frist was booming something at me, but
his eyes kept darting alternately between my breasts and somewhere just
above my forehead.
"You're starting out with something less than a regular load. Usually
we'd give you the cases of whoever left, but O'Donnell obviously had
some doozies that'd be hard to start out with. So I took over his
caseload, kept about a quarter of mine, and gave you the rest. As the
new person, you'll be on screening duty."
MCU's screening assignment is a notorious time-waster. Paralegals dole
out the incoming police reports among the various trial units: major
crimes, gangs, drugs and vice, general felonies, domestic violence, and
misdemeanors. But to make sure that no one misses a heavy charge and
issues it as a throw-away, any report that even arguably establishes
probable cause for a major person felony goes to MCU for screening. The
prob
lem is, cautious paralegals end up finding potential felonies in
every run-of-the-mill assault. Now I'd be the one to waste hours
separating the wheat from the chaff. So much for my big impressive
step up in the prosecutorial food chain.
Frist covered a handful of issues he thought I should be aware of on
the cases I'd inherited from him, then changed the subject. "Now, as
for this Easterbrook matter, I talked to the boss. I don't think he
intended to throw you into the middle of things so quickly. You know,
he figured the judge'd turn up in a couple of hours, and he wanted to
make sure we did what we could in the meantime. But now this thing's
looking like it's got real potential."
When I first started in the DA's office, I was sickened by how excited
the career prosecutors seemed to get over a juicy incoming murder case.
I swore I'd never treat human tragedy as career fodder. But it had
since become clear to me that attorneys who have stuck with this job
for any amount of time handle it one of two ways: They either get off
on the adrenaline of their files or they become apathetic. Compassion
is a straight path to burnout. I wasn't yet to the point where I
looked at a person's murder simply as a trial challenge, but, when I
did, I'd rather approach my cases as a passionate competitor like Frist
than yet another of the lazy plea-bargaining bureaucrats we keep around
here.
But precisely because Frist was competitive, he wanted in on this one.
"Go ahead and ride the case solo while she's missing, but if a body
turns up, you don't want this as your first murder."
I opened my mouth, but Frist was all over me. "Zip it, Kincaid. I
know you're hungry, but you can forget about running this on your own.
And don't think I'm picking on you for being new. Or because you're a
woman."
Out the window went the staples of my reliable boss-fighting arsenal.
Clearly I'd need to be more creative.
"We always have two attorneys on any death penalty case," he explained,
"which this may very well be, if it's a kidnap gone wrong. And
Clarissa Easterbrook isn't exactly your typical murder victim. Every
person out there who thinks he can benefit will be crawling up our
asses to scrutinize every aspect of this investigation and
prosecution."
"Is it still my case, or should I go ahead and tell MCT to call you the