Missing Justice (28 page)

Using a legal pad, I listed the various property areas in dispute, then located each on my map. Four of the six Gunderson properties within the eventual boundary had not been included for development under the original proposal.

Next I turned to the legislators involved in the debates, noting their names and where they stood on permitting development within each disputed geographic area. For the most part, predictable pro-development and pro-environment patterns emerged, with the act’s opponents favoring open development across the board while proponents favored restrictions. But one legislator was clearly pushing the expansions that favored Gunderson more than he was pushing others: Representative Clifford Brigg.

I went back to the records librarian and asked for anything she could give me on Brigg within six months of August 1980.

“Unfortunately,” she said, “the articles from back then aren’t computerized, so you’re going to have to do it by hand.” She led me to a table in another corner that contained the old microfilm machines, pulled a couple of notebooks from a nearby shelf, and explained they were the indexes of Oregonian articles from 1980 through 1981. If I made a list of the ones I wanted to see, she’d pull the rolls of microfilm I needed.

If it involved making a list, I could handle it.

Brigg was no stranger to the press. Some of the articles appeared to concern the growth legislation, but most seemed campaign-related. It must have been a reelection year.

I requested all the articles that looked like they might relate to the growth boundary and a handful of the ones about the campaign.

My new best friend had the rolls of film in just a few minutes. After a quick refresher course on how to use the machine, I jumped in, turning first to the stories on the growth legislation.

Most of the articles were brief, containing competing sound bites from developers and environmentalists, with a few remarks from legislators thrown in for flavor. But a longer feature offered a good overview of the debate and Brigg’s role in it.

The first section of the article described the rapid growth that was swallowing rural land along the 1-5 corridor from Salem to Seattle. Although the last decade had seen only an 8 percent increase in the population of the Willamette Valley, the geography of the urban area had sprawled 22 percent.

The article explained the Smart Growth Act and the general policy arguments on each side of the debate. Planned growth versus the free market, environmental preservation versus human use of land, the collective good versus individual choice, open space versus affordable housing, blah blah blah.

Then the writer got to Brigg:

The future of the Smart Growth Act is likely to be determined by a handful of moderate legislators who appear to favor the theory of an urban growth boundary but who are focusing upon the particularities of how that boundary will be drawn. Key among these detail-oriented legislators is Rep. Clifford Brigg. Staff members to several other legislators report that Brigg has been active behind the scenes, working to ensure that the line is drawn to his satisfaction before he lends his support. In a statement issued in response to inquiries from the Oregonian about these reports, Brigg stated, “If we publicly debated every bit of minutia about every piece of legislation, we’d never get any work done as a body. So, yes, I have been talking to my colleagues about what I’d like to see in this legislation for me to support it. I’m in favor of the idea, but we need to do it right. My eventual vote will be public and open to scrutiny.”

As Brigg put it, all he was trying to do was to make sure that the line was drawn properly, so the prettiest, most sacred land wasn’t turned into a Kmart. It sounded perfectly logical, but was it coincidence that Clifford Brigg’s notion of smart growth just happened to deliver a windfall to Gunderson?

Once I finished plodding through the Smart Growth articles, I had just enough time to take a quick look at the reelection stories before the library closed. The campaign pieces were quaint compared to today’s politics: Brigg eats ice cream at a strawberry social, Brigg feeds ducks at the Rhododendron Gardens, Brigg is in favor of a new fire station.

Then, in the background of the next photograph, I saw a familiar face in an unfamiliar uniform. The shot was a closeup of Brigg shaking hands with a former secretary of state who had come to town for a commencement speech. The face in the background was my father’s.

When I picture my father in his work gear, I see him in his standard green forest-ranger togs. Not that I’d remember it, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen him in the Oregon State Police dress blues he wore in the photograph. Those would have been the exception even when he was a state trooper. For just a second, I enjoyed the chance to see my father as he was then. His light brown hair was silver now, and his face was thinner, but he was still just as handsome. I looked at the date of the article. Dad left the state for the forest service just two months later.

Then, for reasons I didn’t fully understand, I found myself wishing I hadn’t stumbled onto this picture at all. What was my father doing with a man like Clifford Brigg?

I looked up to give my eyes a rest and to stretch my neck. When I had reached into a full extension on my right, I noticed a man standing by the table where my books of legislative history were still open. Did he want my table, the books, or maybe just to stand there being weird?

Before I made it across the room he had disappeared behind a bookshelf next to the table. I took a quick tour of the floor, but he was nowhere to be found. Damn. There had been something familiar about him, but there was no way I was going to place him without a second look.

I put an end to the search when the friendly librarian started making the rounds to tell everyone that the doors would be closing in ten minutes. I noticed that she looked directly at me when she mentioned our ability to support our local library by cleaning up after ourselves.

I stole a final look at the photograph of my father. I felt foolish. My occasionally overactive imagination was at it again. No mystery men were following me, and my father wasn’t wrapped up in anything nefarious with Clifford Brigg. Surely he was there as security for the event.

I pushed print on the machine before tucking away the film. Dad would get a kick out of the picture, and he might even have some background to share on Brigg. In the meantime, I had earned a night off.

One advantage to being a woman alone should be the occasional luxury of coming home and falling straight to sleep. By the time I finished my night out with Grace three Nordstrom shopping bags, two martinis, and a slice of lemon cheesecake later I was exhausted.

But I had the usual crap to attend to. My phone was ringing as I walked in the door, and Vinnie had left a little message of his own for me, right inside his doggie door to make sure I knew it was intentional.

“It’s after midnight,” I said to my caller, “way past any reasonable notion of call cutoffs.”

“It’s Graham Szlipkowsky.”

“And how’s my favorite defense attorney doing on this very late evening?” I held the phone between my ear and shoulder while I began scooping, scrubbing, and disinfecting my tile, Vinnie watching contentedly from the nearby wicker chair.

“He’s very sorry to be calling you.”

“Not a problem. What’s up?”

“I wanted to make sure you’re going to be around tomorrow. We need to talk.”

“We are talking.”

“No, I need to show you something. Can you come to my office?”

I was too tired to try to pry the information out of him. If he was going to insist on meeting, better to get it over with. “Fine,” I said, “but let’s make it early. I’ll meet you at seven.”

“a.m.? When do you sleep, Kincaid?”

“Who says I sleep?” I said, hanging up.

So much for a full Sunday off.

We met at his office at seven sharp. I noticed that in his khakis and navy pullover, he dressed better on the weekend than he did at the courthouse.

“It better be good, Slip.”

“I don’t know if it’s good, but it’s definitely notable.”

My usual Sunday routine of reading the New York Times over dim sum at Fong Chong was notable. This had better top it.

Slip led me into a small library that appeared to double as a lunchroom, coffee bar, and chat area. There was a tiny television on the countertop. Four men in jellybean colored T-shirts were wiggling up a storm with a room full of toddlers.

“You better have something better for me than a show that transforms perfectly cute kids into annoying little freaks.”

“Very funny,” he said, hitting a button that turned the screen to an even blue. “I think this is big, Samantha.”

“Enough with the dramatics. Just show me why you brought me here.”

He pulled a plastic Gap bag from a nearby chair and set it on the card table in the center of the room.

“My investigator found a safe deposit box at First Coast Bank rented by Clarissa Easterbrook. The key was a match.”

“And that’s what he found?” I asked, looking at the bag.

He nodded.

“And how exactly did your investigator convince the bank to turn over the contents of a safe deposit box that didn’t belong to him?”

“Do you really need to know?”

The truth was, I didn’t. If there was any legal violation, it was probably only civil. Anyway, courts don’t care if evidence is obtained illegally, as long as the government’s hands were clean.

He pulled out a manila folder, a videotape, and a computer disc.

He handed me the folder first. Inside were photocopies of what appeared to be a case file for Gunderson Development v. City of Portland.

Slip must have seen a flash of recognition cross my face. “Does that mean something to you?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I said, flipping through it. This little joint venture definitely fell outside the lines of normal procedure. I wasn’t about to tell him everything until I figured out for myself how the pieces fit together.

From what I could gather in my quick review, the city had denied Gunderson’s request for a variance to convert an historically significant building into condominiums. Gunderson appealed, arguing that the city employee who denied the request had been untrained, filling in for the usual specialist who was on maternity leave. Gunderson argued that the employee had failed to consider whether his redevelopment plan preserved the original architecture to a significant degree, which was required to obtain a variance.

I didn’t know squat about administrative law, but Gunderson’s appeal looked like a major loser. No judge administrative or not wants to be in the business of second-guessing the discretionary decisions made by front-line bureaucratic implementers.

But Clarissa had agreed with Gunderson. Result? Gunderson threw some plumbing and a few walls into a rundown old church and ended up with condominiums that probably sold for four hundred dollars a square foot.

The case sounded familiar. Had I seen it when I reviewed Clarissa’s files at City Hall? I looked at the dates. Clarissa had ruled in favor of Gunderson almost four months ago, and I had only seen the cases that were currently pending.

At the end of the file I found a page of handwritten notes. They were dated a week before Clarissa’s death and were in the same slanted scrawl I’d seen in Clarissa’s files.

Tt/ DC about Gunderson appeal. He advd me city would not reopen. We agreed re Grice.

Something about the file was still tugging at a corner of a memory. Each time I thought I was close to plucking out the thought, I’d lose hold of it entirely. “What else?”

He held up the floppy disc. “I’ve got to give this back to my investigator. It’s password protected.”

“And the video?”

“That’s the doozie.”

Slip popped the videotape into the built-in VCR beneath the small television screen. The blue screen turned to static, then to a shaky image of a couple walking out a door.

It was Clarissa Easterbrook and T. J. Caffrey. Caffrey looked around but apparently didn’t see whoever was holding the camera. He held Clarissa’s face and then kissed her. It was long but gentle. I felt my eyes shift away instinctively from their private moment, but I forced myself to focus.

Their faces still close, they spoke a few words to each other. Then the camera followed as Caffrey walked Clarissa to her car, giving her one last kiss before she got in. He hopped into his car, and the two drove away. The camera panned outward to show the backdrop, a two-story motel with doors that edged the parking lot. A sign at the road declared it to be the Village Motor Inn.

When the screen went to static and then back to blue, I looked at Slip. “It’s a motel north of Vancouver,” he explained, “about thirty miles out.”

They’d gone all the way to Washington to avoid being spotted. Obviously, they hadn’t been careful enough.

“I guess that confirms the affair,” I said. “You think someone was blackmailing her? I hate to break it to you, Slip, but it might’ve been Jackson.” If sympathy and threatening letters didn’t do the trick, a videotape like this one might. He had followed Clarissa at least once before.

“If it’s blackmail,” he said, “what do you make of this?” Slip handed me a brown padded envelope addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Terrence J. Caffrey on a street in Eastmoreland. “The video was inside that envelope.”

There was no postmark.

“Maybe it was hand-delivered, and Caffrey showed it to Clarissa?”

“Possible. Or maybe Clarissa was going to mail it and never got around to it.”

I thought about it. Tara had gotten the impression that Clarissa’s mystery man was reluctant to live happily ever after with her. Maybe Clarissa was playing hardball? I had seen obsession inspire crazier actions against a supposed loved one.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t know everything yet, a state of knowledge I was never good at accepting.

Before I left, I gave Slip the photographs of Gunderson and Minkins that Chuck had pulled for me. I kept their PPDS reports for myself. Gunderson was sixty-five with a clean record. Minkins was thirty, on probation for a forged check.