Murder One (27 page)

Sloane was no psychiatrist, but after meeting Oberman and witnessing his mood swings, he thought it Oberman who needed psychiatric help. The man had a persecution complex and appeared obsessive and emotionally troubled when it came to anything regarding his ex-wife. He concluded it wasn’t Barclay who hated to lose, it was Oberman, and what he had lost, and clearly had still not come to grips with, was Barclay. Sloane wondered if the loss of Carly had set Oberman off again, bringing with it the intense feelings of abandonment that he had projected on Barclay ten years earlier, whether that could be the motivation for the man to go to such extremes to hurt her now. Whatever the answer, Sloane no longer questioned why Barclay had installed a security system at her home.

NINETEEN

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udge Myron Kozlowski waited until the metal security gate to his building’s underground garage clattered closed before turning off the car engine. The headlights reflecting off the cement wall extinguished, and he sat in a yellow-tinted light. Winter darkness came just after four in the evening, and the lights in the cement bunker of his apartment building were not what they should be, though better after his complaint. A complaint from a federal district court judge tended to provoke the building owner to action.

Kozlowski exited and squeezed between his car and the one in the adjacent stall, stopping at the rear bumper to assess his surroundings. Seeing no one, he walked to the elevator lobby, ran his passkey over the sensor pad, and pulled open the door.

He would have preferred a secure building with a guard at the front desk, but you got what you paid for in life, and since he continued to pay for his ex-wife to live in the luxury that he had afforded her when they were married, this was going to be it for a while. His choices had been further limited because of Berta.

As soon as he inserted the key in the deadbolt of his apartment, Berta begin her routine, barking and panting, paws digging at the carpet. When he opened the door, her black nose inched through the crack, sniffing, but it wasn’t until he stepped in that the real histrionics began.

“Back up now, Berta. Back up,” he said. “Be a good girl.”

His wife had kept Gertie, Berta’s companion, mostly out of spite. She didn’t much care for the animals, but it was another way to hurt him, and the woman’s vengeance seemingly knew no bounds. She would make him pay dearly for his tryst with his former legal secretary, and if that meant splitting up Berta and Gertie, two white standard poodles, well, that was just more guilt on his conscience.

Berta circled the center of the room as if chasing an imaginary tail, whining and whimpering. She would not stop until he took her out, and who could blame her after being kept up inside for nearly twelve hours.

“Give me a chance to get changed.” She followed him into his room and found her chew toy—a large rubber bone—shaking her head back and forth. Kozlowski draped his tie over the tie rack in the closet and hung up his suit jacket. He smelled the armpits of his shirt and examined the collar before placing it on a hanger rather than depositing it in the dry-clean pile. He could stretch another day out of it. He exchanged the suit pants for a pair of sweats, pulled on his fleece and a pair of tennis shoes, and made his way to the door, where he slipped on his heavy winter coat and gloves and took the leash off the peg. By now Berta’s entire back end was swinging from side to side like a streetwalker’s. It was all he could do to get her to stand still long enough to clip the leash to the metal ring on her collar.

“All right, girl. Come on, now.”

Outside, he turned left, taking their normal route east on Thomas Street to Fifteenth Avenue. Just over a mile and a half, the walk satisfied both Berta and him. Turning right on Roy, he began to weave his way back west. Berta found her usual spot just past the cherry tree and stopped to do her business. Kozlowski waited, his breath white puffs. When Berta had finished, he reached into his pockets to retrieve the plastic newspaper bag he brought each day for this occasion and realized he had, in his haste, forgotten to grab it off the kitchen counter. About to look around to determine whether he and Berta might sneak off without cleaning up her mess, he felt the presence of someone approaching from behind.

“Good evening, Judge. It is nice evening for walk, no?”

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Sloane had intended to return to the office to prepare his jury voir dire questions, but Barclay had called and asked that he meet her at her home. He heard a sense of urgency and vulnerability that was unlike her. He picked up Italian food from Maggiano’s in the Lincoln Center before crossing the I-90 bridge and fighting the traffic on I-5 North.

When he arrived, she opened the door with an apology. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think with everything coming to a head, I had an anxiety attack. I went for a run, and I feel better.”

He held her close. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I’m glad you told me.”

Just as quickly, she regained her confidence. “I’ll be all right.”

“It’s okay if you’re not, you know.”

She sighed and nodded.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

In the kitchen, she put plates and silverware on the counter as he removed the lids from tinfoil pans. “I hope it’s still hot.”

Conversation at dinner was limited. Barclay seemed lost in thought and, perhaps knowing what it was like for a trial attorney on the eve of any trial, let alone a murder trial, she let him alone with his thoughts. People complained that attorneys overbilled them, but anyone who had practiced law, or lived with someone who did, knew that, when in trial, good lawyers could bill every waking moment of the day and a few hours during the night when they awoke to make notes or because they could not get the next day’s cross-examination questions out of their head.

Reid stood. “I have something for you.” She left the room and returned with one hand behind her back. “Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”

When he opened his eyes, she had placed a gift-wrapped box about three inches wide and eight inches long in his hand.

Sloane weighed it. “Well, I don’t think it’s that new Ferrari I’ve been eyeing. Maybe the key?”

She punched his arm. “Open it.”

He slipped off the bow and undid the wrapping, revealing a gold-leafed box. He slid the top off. “Oh my.” He looked up at her, then back at the watch, a silver and black Rolex.

She smiled. “Do you like it?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Read the back.”

Sloane removed the watch and turned it over.

All my love
,

Barclay

“I thought you could wear it at trial . . . sort of a good-luck charm.”

He remained dumbstruck.

“Try it on,” she said. She helped fasten it to his wrist. “When you look at it, you can think of me and know I’m always with you.”

“You didn’t have to do this,” he said. “You’re already always with me.”

They made love on the rug in the living room. Afterward, Reid’s head rested on Sloane’s chest until he could not put off any longer the realities of starting a trial in twelve hours.

“Okay,” he said. “Time for this cowboy to get some work done.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have bought you that watch,” she said, getting up.

Sloane stood. “It’s beautiful, but it won’t tell me much about the jurors.”

She walked into the kitchen. “I’ll make some tea.”

They had not spoken about his conversation with Felix Oberman, and, sensing that it had been the source of her earlier anxiety, Sloane decided to get it out in the open. “Do you want to know about my conversation with your ex-husband?”

She pulled the box of tea from the cabinet and turned and looked at him, stone-faced. “Let’s see. Did he tell you how I set him up with his transvestite patient? Or about how I ran my face into a wall repeatedly to accuse him of beating me up?”

Sloane nodded. “Both.”

“And how I poisoned our daughter against him?”

“That too.”

Her voice became more satiric. “Let’s see . . . oh, yes, he likes to tell people that I’m a sociopath. Did he tell you that as well?”

“Yes, he did.”

“And?”

“And I think he has some deep-seated emotional problems.”

She exhaled, and with it went the hostility. She took the teakettle and filled it at the sink. “I don’t know what was more ridiculous, that I would set him up with one of his patients or that I would repeatedly bang my face against the wall.”

“I’d say they’re about equal on the ridiculous scale,” Sloane said, trying unsuccessfully to lighten her mood.

“He’s an intellectual bully.” She put the kettle on the stove. “But don’t underestimate him. He’s very bright . . . brilliant, in fact. That’s what initially attracted me. He was more refined and interesting than the idiots I’d meet in the bars or who would hit on me in depositions. He was interested in what I had to say, my opinions on things. And he seemed gentle, kind.”

Sloane didn’t stop her. He’d need everything he could get to crossexamine Oberman.

She walked back into the living room. “I knew he drank, but I didn’t know how much. It turned out to be vodka, and a lot of it. He was very good at hiding it, which made it even more difficult to detect. I also began to suspect that he was gay, or at least bisexual. Our sex life became virtually nonexistent, and if I confronted him, he blamed my career, said I was never home, that I was ‘wed to the law’ and always too tired. I
was
wed to the law. I had no choice. I had no husband.”

He let her go on, sensing it to also be cathartic.

“I began to realize that I had been something to further his career. When we met, he was on the University of Washington faculty. He wanted to be chief of the psychiatry department. He sat on national boards. He needed the appearance of stability and normalcy, and he needed my income. Whenever I confronted him on things like where he’d been or how much he’d drunk, he would
bully me, tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about, then he’d begin to play intellectual chess games with me, turn it around, say I was the one with the problems. I discovered large cash withdrawals, and so I began to hide income from him, to protect me and Carly.”

She walked back into the kitchen and pulled mugs and the sugar bowl from the cabinet.

Sloane followed, leaning against the counter. “He said he filed for divorce.”

“Of course he did.” She shrugged. “I threw him out, and he saw the writing on the wall. After dozens of phone calls, he realized I wasn’t going to capitulate. It infuriated him. So he went on the offensive and filed for divorce. He thought he was going to get a huge chunk of money.” She pulled open the refrigerator in search of the cream. “Then he began a systematic campaign to prove I was unfit to be a mother. He knew exactly what symptoms and behavior to tell the attorneys and the child-custody evaluators to convince them I was mentally unstable.” She closed the door. “Did I fight back? Did I hire a private investigator? You bet I did. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you when the well-being of your child is at stake?”

Sloane thought of his fight with Tina’s parents in the battle for custody over Jake after her death. He had fought back, and he had been willing to do just about anything for Jake, including giving custody to his biological father so as not to hurt him further.

“Leenie was everything to me. I wasn’t going to give her to a man who drank and had shown little interest in actually being a father. Did I set him up?” She frowned. “Please. He set himself up. He was having a relationship with one of his patients. I had to get tested for venereal diseases. Do you know . . .” She shook her head. The emotions finally caught up with her. She pinched tea into a strainer, but tears leaked down her cheeks. “It was humiliating.”

“I’m sorry you’re going through this again.” He held her. “But this is not all bad, you know. It shows a bias. It creates serious doubt as to his credibility.”

“It’s a part of my life I had hoped was behind me forever. To have it come back now, and in a public arena, is just . . . It brings back a lot of bad memories. I want to move forward.”

“You will,” he said, knowing whether she actually would or not was squarely in his hands.

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Kozlowski flinched, heart hammering in his chest. He recognized the accent but not the voice. A large dark-skinned man stood with his hands thrust in the pockets of a black leather car coat, the collar turned up, a black knit hat pulled low on his forehead.

“Who are you?” Kozlowski felt out of breath from the cold and the adrenaline rush.

“Just a man who enjoys a nice evening.”

“How do you know me?”

The man pointed to Berta. “I think your dog is finished.”

Berta tugged on the leash, ready to move on. The man reached inside his coat, and it caused Kozlowski to take a precautionary step backward. The man removed several plastic bags, the kind used for groceries at the local supermarkets. “You look to be in need of assistance.”

Kozlowski hesitated, but when the man shook the bag, he took it and slowly stooped to clean up Berta’s mess.

The man sighed, his breath marking the cold air. “Such is life, Judge, is it not, that we are always cleaning up someone else’s shit.”

Kozlowski wound the top of the bag into a knot. “What is it you want?”

“Just to walk.” The man pointed at Berta. “Is never good to keep a woman waiting, no? Especially one who is kept inside so many hours a day.”

Kozlowski felt his stomach grip. He looked about, hoping to see . . . whom? What could he do? Cry out for help? Even if a police officer appeared at that very moment, as in some predictable movie scene, what would he say? No. He’d built this pile of shit. No one else could clean it up.