Dirty Blonde (27 page)

Cate raised a hand. “Do what they say, so you don’t get in trouble. And remember, you’re Invaluable.” Val threw her arms open and gave her a big hug, which still smelled like powder. Cate willed herself not to get choked up and turned to the law clerks. “Guys, listen. Did either of you get job offers?”

“Not yet,” Emily answered, and Sam shook his head.

“Morgan just rejected me, yesterday.”

Cate patted his tiny shoulder. “Okay, don’t worry. Take the weekend to put your life in order. Sleep in. Enjoy yourselves.”

“Are we out of a job?” Emily asked, upset.

“No, you work for me now, and I’m giving you both a vacation. Take some time off. I’ll match your pay. In fact, I’ll give you a raise, okay?”

“You don’t have to do that, Judge.” Emily’s eyes glistened, but Sam nodded.

“Yes, she does.”

“I’ll be in touch with you next week. Just don’t worry.” Cate gave them each a quick hug, went to the coat rack, and slid into her coat. “See you later. Say good-bye to the courtroom deputy for me,” she said, as she left her chambers. She held her chin up as they crowded silently into the tiny judges’ elevator and rode it down to the judges’ lobby, where Cate turned to Brady. “You must be exhausted. Don’t you have a shift change or something?”

“At two, we’ll switch.”

“Good.” Cate turned to Justin. “I’d like you to go over to a house on Meadowbrook Road and stay there until the end of the day.” She gave him Gina’s address. “Then go back next week and the one after that. Stay there, just in case Russo gets in somehow.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, thanks for everything.” Cate shook his hand and nodded to Brady. “We outta here?” she asked, and she went through the door to the parking lot, got into her car, and drove it out, picking up Brady’s black Crown Vic on her tail by the time she reached the security kiosk. She took a right onto Seventh Street, then another onto Race, around the back entrance of the courthouse.

Traffic was light but the rain was heavy, and she cruised down the street, the windshield wipers thumping back and forth, and she stopped at the red light, numbly watching them beat, trying not to think about the fact that she’d lost everything she had in one stormy afternoon. She reached her street and took a left, stopped by the traffic and commotion she’d never seen before on her quiet street. A mob of reporters carrying umbrellas crowded the sidewalk in front of her house, and at least eight boxy white newsvans, each with its cheery multicolored logo, clogged traffic by parking on the curb, their microwave poles soaring into the storm like modern-day church spires.

Oh no.
Cate kicked herself. She should have realized that at least some media would be staked out in case she came home. She’d been too preoccupied to think ahead. She hit the gas, then braked. A WCAU-TV newsvan stuck out into the street, preventing her from going forward. Cate threw the car into reverse just as one of the reporters spotted her, pointing with a surprised shout that was muffled by her car windows. Suddenly photographers aimed still cameras at the car, their automatic flashes firing like tiny explosions. TV cameramen raised their videocameras to their shoulders, pointing long lenses at her. Reporters started running toward her.

Cate had to get out of there. She checked the rear view. The Crown Vic idled behind her. “Brady! Move!” Cate yelled, signaling frantically for him to back up, but it was too late. Reporters banged on the window, shouting questions.

“Judge, are you fit to serve on the bench?” “What do you have to say about reports on your personal life?” Klieg lights sprang to life, aimed at Cate in the car. “Judge Fante, give us a comment! Come on, any comment, Judge!” “Look, this way, Judge!” “Put down the window, Judge!”

Cate slammed on the horn. She couldn’t go back. Reporters swarmed the car. Brady stopped. She looked around for an escape. She couldn’t get out of the car. She’d be imprisoned in the house.
There
. The sidewalk.

“Judge, why are you dating the criminal element? Judge!” “Judge, where’s your ex-husband?” “Judge, are you getting a cut from the TV series?” “Judge, are you gonna sue?”

Cate edged forward as if they weren’t there, and the reporters parted when she didn’t stop, springing out of the way, hollering after her car, filming and snapping away. Reporters ran after the car, but Cate drove up on the curb, then accelerated, avoiding a cameraman near the front bumper.

She hit the gas and sped to the end of the street, then turned around the corner, driving away. Newsvans gave chase, but they were no match for the Mercedes’s eight-cylinder. Cate barreled through the city streets, hit the expressway at speed, and lost them all, including Brady. By the third exit, her cell phone started ringing. She flipped open the phone, tense and upset. “Yes, Brady?”

“Where are you, Judge?”

“Listen, I think I won’t be needing you for a while.”

“What?” Brady was shouting. “You on 95? I’m on 95, looking for you.”

“Brady, relax.” Cate drove under the I-76 sign at the Art Museum exit. “I’m going out of town, and where I’m going, nobody will find me. Not the press, not Russo, not anyone.”

“Judge, tell me exactly where you are. Where you’re going.”

“Thanks, Brady, for everything,” Cate said, and closed the phone. She didn’t want him following her. She didn’t want anybody following her. She’d had enough invasions into her privacy for a lifetime. She hit the gas, reaching seventy, then eighty, soaring away. She didn’t exhale until she left the city limits, and two exits after that, she realized where she was going. The only place where no one could find her.

Because it didn’t exist anymore.

CHAPTER 34

Cate drove with the radio off, insulating herself from the news and leaving Philadelphia far behind. In time, the only sounds were the regular thumping of the rain on the car and the pounding of the big windshield wipers; she switched onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike and drove north for an hour, finally beginning to relax only when she steered off the turnpike. She slowed the car and felt a calming inside, her heartbeat returning to normal at the familiarity of the sights. The FirstEnergy Stadium, the truck accessories outlets, and the plywood gazebos for sale interspersed with the onion domes of Ukrainian Catholic churches, their golden minarets and hatched crucifixes oddly exotic in the rural American landscape.

The elevation changed at Pricetown, and Cate felt the slightest pressure in her ear, like the whisper of an old friend. The rain became sleet, and the car climbed over the wet bridge and into the snowy, tree-covered mountains that embraced the road. The traffic grew sparser on the zigzag route through the Appalachians, and Cate drove over steep hills and down deep valleys, the motion making her aware of her own fatigue, as if she were being rocked to sleep.

Snow began to fall, and she spotted a billboard for a Holiday Inn Express, got off Route 61 in Frackville, and pulled into an almost empty parking lot, where she grabbed her purse and got out of the car. The frigid air took her by surprise, and icy snowflakes bit her cheeks like tiny shards of glass, as if heaven itself was shattering and falling in pieces around her.

When Cate woke up, she wasn’t sure where she was. The room was pitch-black, disorienting her, and she sat up, uncomfortably hot. She still had her coat on and shrugged her way out of it, then rubbed her eyes. A window was in front of her, the curtains open, and the hillside glowed a ghostly white from the new-fallen snow. She turned around and found a clock by its green digital numerals, glowing in the dark. 9:30.

At night?
Cate got up, walked around the bed, and found a switch, which immediately cast a harsh light around the room, reminding her. Holiday Inn.
Resign or sue.
Russo, after her. Marz dead. Simone, murdered. Gina and Warren.

She searched around for her cell phone and saw that the display had gone black. Her battery was dead; she hadn’t plugged it in, of course. She set it down and reached to the end table for the telephone, and her call connected after two rings, when she said, “Gina?”

“Cate! I’ve been calling your cell. Are you okay? I heard there was a crazy guy in court.”

YOU’RE A WHORE.
“Oh, that. I’m fine, really.”

“Where are you?”

“A Holiday Inn in Frackville.”

“You’re kidding. Is Frackville near Frickville? What are you doing in Frick-and-Frackville?”

“I got out of Dodge. I was over the press.” Cate considered telling her she was suspended, then let it go.

“Don’t turn on the TV then. You’ll freak.”

Cate sighed. “How’s the baby?”

“Fine. We still hate the new speech therapist. Hey, why didn’t you just come here?”

“After last night, I think you guys are better off if I stay away. By the way, did you get the bodyguard I sent you?”

“Justin? He’s parked out front. You didn’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I did.”

“So why don’t you come over here, now that we’re all safe?”

“No, thanks. I feel better, away from it all.”

“When are you coming back?”

God knows.
“After the weekend.”

“What about work? Don’t you have court?”

“I’m not on the bench until later.”
Much later.

“Nesbitt was here today. He came and got his car. Nice guy. He was asking about you. Hubba hubba.”

Cate flashed on Nesbitt, watching her from the middle of the courtroom. “Calm yourself. I’m never having sex again.”

“Who’s talking about sex, I’m talking marriage. Oh wait, the baby’s about to knock over a glass.”

“I’ll let you go. I’m fine, and I’ll call you later.”

“Okay, stay in touch. Love you.”

“Me, too.” Cate hung up, suddenly aware that she was hungry and thirsty. She grabbed her bag, found her card key, and left, walking across the parking lot to a Cracker Barrel. The air was black, the night starless, and her Blahniks were wet by the time she reached the restaurant, warming instantly at the sight of its ersatz coziness. Antique ladles and strainers hung from the ceiling, and its fake-country store sold cast-iron skillets, Goo-Goo pies, and souvenir sweatshirts that reminded Cate she had no clothes.

She bought a tourist sweatsuit, a stash of Trident gum, and a takeout meat loaf called Comfort By the Slice, then carried her booty back to her Holiday Inn, where she ate, showered, and slept her way through to Sunday morning, ignoring all media until she picked up the free newspaper in the hotel lobby,
Schuylkill Sunday
. Cate guessed that it wouldn’t mention her secret sex life.

She got upstairs and skimmed the newspaper at her desk, over Cracker Barrel’s Country Morning Breakfast. Soft indirect light filled the room, reflecting off the pristine snow outside the window, and Cate felt rejuvenated for the first time in days until her gaze fell on the date on the newspaper. February 23. The anniversary of her mother’s death. She felt a familiar tightening in her chest. Her mother had died seventeen years ago, of an aneurysm. Today.

Ring!
The phone jarred Cate from her thoughts. Gina was the only person who knew she was here. She crossed to the end table and picked up.

A man’s voice said, “Judge?”

Cate went silent, the fear rushing instantly back.

“It’s Nesbitt. Steve Nesbitt.”

“Oh, jeez.” Cate sat down on the bed, relieved. “How did you know I was here?”

“Your friend Gina. She called me at the Roundhouse and said you were going home. She’s worried about you.”

“I’m fine. It feels good to be alone, me and my Cracker Barrel. I’m developing a taste for Velveeta wedges on iceberg.”

“You called off the feds, and your bodyguard is eating pancakes at Gina’s. You think that was a good idea?”

“Yes.”

“When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know.” Cate hesitated to tell him she’d been fired, but he already knew much worse about her, so she did.

“I figured Sherman for a better man than that.”

“Thanks,” Cate said, touched.

“I don’t know if you’re safe up there. We still don’t have Russo, and Frackville’s not that far from the city.”

“But how would he know I’m here?”

“He could dig a little. He knows there’s a state prison in Frackville, all of us do. Does your bio show your hometown?”

“No, and Frackville isn’t my hometown anyway.” Cate had made sure to keep that to herself, in the snotty Philly bar. “Up here, I feel safer than I have in a long time.”

“I won’t take that personally.”

Cate caught herself. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I could call the local police. Ask them to check in on you.”

“No, that’s okay. I doubt they can spare the car, and I like that no one up here knows my story, or cares.”

“Look, it’s Sunday, and I’m off duty. I could come up, keep an eye on things. We could have dinner.” Nesbitt added quickly, “Obviously, I don’t mean anything by it. I mean, well, you know what I mean. Not like a date.”

Hubba hubba.
“More above-the-call, like in the courtroom?”

“I got you in, I’ll get you out. I told you that. So what do you say? Should I come up tonight?”

February 23.
“Probably not. It’s the anniversary of my mother’s death. I might go visit the grave.”

“I could sit in the parking lot, keep an eye out.”

“That’s okay, thanks.”

“Well, I’ll give a call and check in on you. Take care, Judge.” Nesbitt hung up.

Cate set the receiver down on the hook, feeling a warmth that evaporated when she eyed the snow-covered scene outside the window.

Bracing herself for what was to come.

CHAPTER 35

Cate’s was one of the few cars on Route 61, which had been plowed and salted, its shoulders triangles of clumped snow. She felt fortified by a fresh cup of Mobil-station coffee, her windshield newly cleared by a cheap scraper. The route snaked around tree-covered hillsides into the town of Ashland, and she traveled the main drive, which ended in an immense bronze statue of Whistler’s
Mother,
sitting atop the peak of the hill. She looked away as she passed its pedestal, which read: A MOTHER IS THE HOLIEST THING ALIVE.