Deadly Judgment (Detective Sarah Spillman Mystery Series Book 5) Page 4

  “There’s blood on the carpet, too,” Ernie said. “Get samples of all of it, so we can see if it’s McCleary’s blood or someone else’s.”

  “You got it,” Todd said.

  Then Jack Jamison, the Denver Police Department’s coroner, walked into the room. Jack’s older, with steel-gray hair and the aura of a wise professor. He quickly took in the room.

  “Judge McCleary,” he pronounced. “Who would’ve thought?”

  “You got the late call?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “When it’s a judge …” He left the rest unsaid. He stood in front of the body. “You got all your pics?”

  Todd tipped his head at McCleary. “He’s all yours.”

  Ernie and Todd stepped back and watched as Jack went over to the body. He set a medical bag down next to the chair, then did a quick examination, his nose wrinkling when he looked at McCleary’s head. He muttered something under his breath.

  “Likely a single blow to the head,” he said. “With some force. I’ll know more when I get him on the table.”

  “You think the judge was alive at that point?” I asked.

  Jamison’s lips were a thin line as he scrutinized the body. “Probably, but I’ll make a final determination at the autopsy.” He stood straight and scratched his nose. “I’m sure everything on my schedule will get bumped for this.”

  “From my standpoint, good,” I said.

  Jamison frowned at me. “I’ll run bloodwork to see if he had any drugs or alcohol in his system.”

  He gave the body one last look, then instructed two EMTs who had rolled a gurney to the office door. The man and woman stepped into the room and waited while Ernie carefully untied McCleary’s arms and legs. Ernie bagged and tagged the rope as evidence and gave it to Todd. Then the EMTs put the body on the stretcher, covered it, and rolled it out of the room. I waited until they were gone, then checked more desk drawers. I didn’t find anything, and when I got to the lower right drawer, it was locked. I glanced at Ernie. “You see a key for this drawer?”

  He glanced at the desk and shook his head.

  I stood up. “I’ll see if I can find it, and I’m going to look around the rest of the house.”

  “I checked the house already. I didn’t see anything out of place, but help yourself. The more eyes, the better.”

  I nodded and walked into the hallway. I tackled the main floor first, and looked in the living room, dining room, and the family room. All the rooms were large, decorated with expensive furniture and artwork. As Ernie had said, nothing appeared out of place. It seemed robbery hadn’t been a motive. I went into the kitchen and took in the room. It was new, tidy, and upscale, but a slight grease smell lingered. I walked over to the sink, where a pan was soaking. Three chairs sat around a breakfast table. McCleary had been on the fourth one. I moved to a small built-in desk in the corner and carefully searched it. I found a keyring with a set of keys in a drawer and took them.

  I went down into the basement next. There were two bedrooms, both with beds neatly made, closets and dressers empty. The main room had a large pool table with red felt. A poker table and chairs sat in the corner. One wall was dominated by a bar with cabinets, a small refrigerator, and glass shelves displaying a variety of liquor bottles. I walked over and looked at some of them. Expensive brands.

  I went back upstairs and walked to the foyer, then up the winding staircase. I checked two bedrooms upstairs, then went into the master suite. A king-size fourposter bed sat near one wall, with matching dressers against another. I checked both dressers. The first one was hers: a faint lavender odor wafted up when I opened the drawers. One was full of jewelry, mostly gold, along with beaded necklaces and a few brooches. An expensive Rolex and some old coins sat on the Judge’s dresser, and there was three hundred dollars in cash in the top drawer. I poked around and found a small key. I took it, then checked the closet and bathroom, and didn’t see anything suspicious. I gave the room one last look and went back downstairs to McCleary’s office.

  Ernie glanced up at me. “Notice anything awry?”

  I shook my head and held up the key ring and the key I’d taken from the upstairs dresser. “Let’s see if one of these will open that desk drawer.”

  I walked over to the desk and tried the small key first. It fit. I turned it and opened the drawer. Inside were some papers and tucked underneath them was a single envelope. I took it out, set it on the desk, and stared at it. Judge McCleary’s name was typed on it, but nothing else, no address or postmark. I carefully opened the envelope, pulled out a piece of paper, and unfolded it. Then I signaled for Ernie. “Come over here.”

  He gave me a funny look and came to the desk. “What?”

  I pointed at the paper. “Look at that.”

  Typed in the center of the page, in large letters, Times New Roman, was a message:

  Your judgment is coming.

  Chapter Six

  I stared at the note, then read it again. “Your judgment is coming.”

  “Who sent it?” Ernie asked.

  I stared at the piece of paper. “I don’t know.”

  “How creative,” Ernie said drolly.

  I snorted. “McCleary’s wife was sure he’d tell her about any threatening notes.”

  “What do you know, he didn’t.”

  “Or she’s lying. We need to follow up with her on that.” I looked at Todd. “Did you follow the Robinson trial?”

  He took a picture of one of the bookcases and lowered his camera. “I don’t watch the news that much.” He gestured around the room, then at the empty chair where the body had been. “I see too much of this crap in person. Why would I want to hear about it?”

  “Yeah, I get that,” Ernie said.

  “My girlfriend mentioned it, though,” Todd said. “Wasn’t that guy, Robinson, pissed off at everyone?”

  I pointed at the papers. “And maybe he was threatening the judge.”

  Todd moved around the desk and stared at the note. “What does that mean?”

  “The judge is gonna get judged,” Ernie stated the obvious.

  Todd gave a humorless laugh. “Did someone?”

  I lowered my head and studied the paper again. “This is printed on a computer. We’re probably not going to get anything from it.”

  “Yeah, too bad nobody uses typewriters anymore, where you could match the type to the machine,” Todd said. “You can’t trace anything with printers.”

  I gingerly picked up the pieces of paper. “Ernie, let’s get this bagged and tagged. They can at least check the envelope and note for fingerprints or DNA.”

  Ernie pulled a bag from his pocket, and I put the piece of paper back in the envelope, then dropped it into the bag. Ernie gave that to Todd, who put it in a paper bag sitting near the door. I rooted around the rest of the desk drawers again to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

  Ernie rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “So we have the daughter, Dana, who said she wondered if something might’ve been going on with this last trial. The wife says she didn’t know anything about a threatening note, though.”

  I stood back. “It doesn’t seem like it. She did give me the name of McCleary’s friend, Ken Tewksbury.”

  He nodded knowingly. “Did McCleary not want to tell his wife, not worry her, but he talks to his best friend about the threat? If I were in his shoes, I might do that. I keep my wife in the dark about things with the job.”

  I stared at the chair where the body had been. “Did someone make good on their threat?”

  Ernie shrugged. “That’s the only note you found?”

  “Yes, but I would wonder whether McCleary might have received any others that he left at his office.”

  “Let me talk to Joy again while you talk to Spats.”

  He left the room, and I picked up my phone and dialed Spats. He answered after two rings.

  “Speelmahn,” he said with his typical greeting, a faux-Jamaican slaughtering of my name.

  “Are you at McCl
eary’s office?” I went into the hall to talk to him.

  “Yes, I just got here. I’ve got a couple of techs with me.”

  We talked for several minutes about the investigation, then I said, “I’m going to head over there in a few minutes. And while I’m there, I’ll see if the judge had any threatening notes in his office.”

  “Threats?”

  I told him about the note we’d found in McCleary’s desk.

  “Interesting,” he said when I finished. “We’ll start a search now. See you soon.”

  Ernie came back through the front door. “Joy insisted McCleary never told her about any notes. She was completely surprised, and I’d say a little upset, that he hadn’t told her.”

  “You believe her?”

  “Yes.”

  I pointed to McCleary’s office. “Get things wrapped up here, okay? And get the judge’s electronics to the station. The techs can look at them in the morning. I’m going to check out McCleary’s office, and then I’ll pay his friend, Ken Tewksbury, a visit.”

  Ernie winked. “It’s a little late, so have fun with that.”

  “If he knows about any threats, I want to know that now.”

  “You think he knows about the judge, that he’s dead?”

  I glanced past him to the front door. “It’d be because Joy or Dana called him. I tend to doubt it. Oh.” I pulled my phone from my pocket. “Let me see if Bryce, McCleary’s son, sent a link to the surveillance video.” I checked my email. “Nothing yet. When I get it, I’ll forward it to the techs. Can you take a look at it with them?”

  Ernie stretched, then straightened his jacket. “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Once you finish here, could you stop by Denver Health to talk to Phil’s wife, Brittany? Confirm whether she saw or heard anything tonight, or lately?”

  “I can do that. Then I’ll catch a few winks and be back at the station early.”

  “Yep, late nights and early mornings. That’s the way we like it.” I smiled at him and left the room.

  I went outside to the command van. Rizzo was gone, and the two techs were still working at their laptops. One of them, a man named Lee Holt, looked up.

  “Detective Spillman,” he said. He was always formal with me. “What can I do for you?”

  “Can you run a check for me to see if the judge reported receiving any threatening notes?”

  “Yeah, sure. I’ll check the databases, and I’ll make some calls, too. You going to be inside the house?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve got to go to the courthouse to check the judge’s office. Give me a call once you find out anything.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Have you found anything else noteworthy?”

  He shook his head. “Everything appears aboveboard, at the moment. The judge led a pretty clean life, as far as we can tell.” He pointed at his laptop. “But if something’s there, we’ll find it.”

  I nodded, thanked him for his time, and stepped back outside. The midnight air was chilly as I walked to my Ford Escape and drove to the courthouse.

  “Speelmahn,” Spats said when I walked into Judge McCleary’s office at the Byron White Courthouse. The building was still, not a sound in the dark halls.

  “You made it past the door,” Spats said, a hint of irritation in his tone. “It was an act of Congress to get in here this time of night. I mean, I get that it’s a courthouse, but a judge is dead, you know?”

  “You look better dressed than when you left the station,” I observed with a laugh. Spats did look terrific in a dark pinstripe suit, light blue shirt, and red silk tie.

  “Trissa and I went out to the Chophouse,” he said. “At least we’d finished dinner before I got the call, or Trissa would’ve been more upset than she was. You pay for an expensive steak dinner, you want to enjoy it.” He paused, then said, “She’s working on adjusting to my job, not letting it get to her so much.” He sighed and subconsciously straightened his tie. “But still, sometimes …”

  Two techs that I didn’t recognize paused to look at us.

  “Hey, I’m Chris,” one of them said. He walked over and shook my hand. Then he jerked a thumb at Spats. “How did he get the nickname? He won’t tell me.”

  “It’s a secret,” Spats said.

  The other tech laughed. “A secret. Right. I’m Rob, by the way.”

  I smiled at him, then said to Chris, “If it’s a secret, I guess I can’t tell you.”

  “Aw, come on,” he said. “I’m dying to know.”

  I gestured around the room. “Find me a clue to the judge’s killer, and I’ll tell you.”

  Chris frowned and went back to work. Spats grinned at me.

  “You’re so mean,” he said in a low voice.

  “I’m tired and grouchy,” I replied.

  He waved a finger around. “Anything more at McCleary’s house?”

  I shook my head as I looked around the judge’s office. It was a big room, one wall of bookcases filled with older sets of court reports, and a credenza behind a mahogany desk that held pictures of the judge with his wife and his kids. Near a monitor was a cup with “World’s Greatest Dad” on it. As with his home office, there was another bookcase with sports memorabilia and pictures of the judge with prominent Denver power brokers. A tattered US flag was framed and hung on another wall. Spats gestured at me.

  “Come over to the desk and look at this.”

  I moved over by him, and he pointed at two envelopes on the desk. He’d pulled a single page from one of them.

  “Looks like McCleary got more threats,” Spats observed.

  The first piece of paper appeared identical to what I’d seen at the judge’s house. The note read, “I’m coming for you.” I checked the second envelope. It also had a single sheet of paper with a typed message. “I will get you,” I read.

  “Not much to go on,” Spats said.

  “The messages are different than the one we found in the desk at his house, and it’s not the same font.” I bent down. “Was this mailed to McCleary’s office address?”

  “Yes,” Spats said. “One was postmarked a little over a week ago, and the other one last Wednesday.”

  I straightened up, put my hands on my hips, and thought for a second. “So the first one would’ve been mailed right toward the end of the Robinson trial, and the second one right when it ended.”

  He nodded. “What does that mean? Robinson was out on bail until the end of the trial. He could’ve mailed the first one. But the second one, he was taken to jail and processed. He couldn’t have mailed it out without someone checking it first.”

  I looked at Spats. “If we assume Robinson sent the first note himself, who could’ve mailed the second one for him?”

  He shrugged. “That’s a good question. I’ll take a look at the postmarks, get somebody looking at them, but I doubt it’ll go anywhere. Millions of letters are mailed every day; finding who mailed these is practically impossible.”

  “Which is exactly what the person who mailed them would want.” I stifled a yawn and looked around. “Find anything else?”

  Spats shook his head. “No, but we’ve just gotten started. I was looking at the desk when you got here.”

  My phone rang, and I held up a finger. “Spillman.”

  “Detective Spillman, it’s Lee. Judge McCleary reported last Friday evening that he received two threatening notes. Detective Carlson talked to him about it, and the judge said he didn’t have any idea who was sending the notes. He said the notes said ‘I will get you.’”

  “That matches what we have,” I said, “except that he received three, if you count the one I found in his desk at his house.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Lee said. “The judge said he didn’t know if Felix Robinson, the defendant, from his last trial, would have sent them. According to Carlson, the judge was a little nervous about it.”

  “Huh,” I said. “What did the police do about it?”

  “Carlson asked for some
squad cars to drive around McCleary’s neighborhood a little more often.”

  “Is that the only thing? The judge didn’t talk to Carlson again?”

  “No,” Lee said. “That was it.”

  “Had McCleary ever mentioned threats before?”

  “Not that anyone told me. I’ll double-check on that, but I think that would’ve been in records somewhere.”

  “Good work. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Hang on a second,” I said. As I checked my email, I explained to Lee about the link to the video surveillance I was expecting. “I’ve got the link. I’m forwarding it to you now. I’ll let Ernie know you have it, and he’s going to check it with you.”

  “Sure thing.”

  I ended the call, texted Ernie, and looked at Spats. “The judge reported receiving two threatening notes, and he was a little nervous about it,” I said.

  “What about the third note?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe he just received it and hadn’t had time to report it.”

  “Or maybe he didn’t bother.”

  I thought about that. “One problem is, he’s a judge. Anybody that he sentenced in the past could be angry enough to come after him.”

  “Yeah, but you’d think it’d be the jury that a defendant would be angry with.”

  I smiled. “Ernie said the same thing, but a judge is easier to target. He’s the one laying down the sentence.”

  Spats shrugged. “I guess.” He scratched his head. “If we’re looking at someone from a previous trial he presided over, that’s a lot of cases to go through.”

  Now I let out a big yawn and stretched my back. “Yep. We’ll have to see if we can narrow this down. And in the morning, we need to get some detectives down here to interview McCleary’s staff.”

  “I’ll work on that first thing,” he said.

  I glanced at my watch. “I’m going to talk to McCleary’s best friend now, a guy named Ken Tewksbury. If the judge was worried about things, and he didn’t want to talk to his wife, maybe he told his best friend what was going on.”

  Spats nodded. “It’s pretty late. You think he knows about McCleary’s death?”